44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 1

BRYCHEINIOG

VOLUME XXXVII

2005

Edited by E. G. PARRY

Published by THE BRECKNOCK SOCIETY and MUSEUM FRIENDS 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 2

THE BRECKNOCK SOCIETY and MUSEUM FRIENDS

CYMDEITHAS BRYCHEINIOG a CHYFEILLION YR AMGUEDDFA

OFFICERS President Sr Bonaventure Kelleher Chairman Mr K. Jones Honorary Secretary Miss H. Gichard Membership Secretary Mrs S. Fawcett-Gandy Honorary Treasurer Mr A. J. Bell Honorary Auditor Mr C. Jones Honorary Editor Canon B. Jones Honorary Assistant Editor Mr P. Jenkins Curator of Brecknock Museum and Art Gallery Mr D. C. Moore

Back numbers of Brycheiniog can be obtained from the Assistant Editor, 9 Camden Crescent, Brecon LD3 7BY Articles and books for review should be sent to the Editor, Yr Efail, Aberhafesp, Newtown, Powys SY16 3HN © The copyright of material published in Brycheiniog is vested in the Brecknock Society & Museum Friends. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 3

CONTENTS

Officers of the Society 2

Notes on Contributors 4

Editorial 5

Olive Bacon: an appreciation 7

Reports: Powys Archives Office Catherine Richards 9 The Royal Regiment of Wales Museum, Brecon Alison Hembrow 15

The Roland Mathias Prize Glyn Mathias 19

John Penry: the Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand J. Gwynfor Jones 23

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd Ken Jones 45

The Crisis of Anglicanism in Brecon Edward Parry 81

The Soldiers’ Cottage Homes in Brecon Martin Everett 99

Index 103 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 4

NOTES ON CONTRIBUTORS

Glyn Mathias was brought up in Pembrokeshire and had a distinguished career in television becoming Political Editor of ITN and BBC Wales; he is currently Electoral Commissioner for Wales.

J. Gwynfor Jones retired recently as Professor of Welsh History at the University of Cardiff. His published works, which focus on the early modern history of Wales, include The Welsh Gentry 1536–1640: Images of Status, Honour and Authority (1995) and Aspects of Religious Life in Wales c. 1536–1660 (2003).

Before retirement and his involvement with the Brecknock Society Ken Jones had lectured on social history and business at the universities of Cardiff, London and Berkeley, California.

Edward Parry recently contributed brief historical essays to Jamie Owen’s latest book, Welsh Journeys; at present the local history of Montgomeryshire is taking up an increasing amount of his time.

Martin Everett is the Curator of the Royal Regiment of Wales Museum in Brecon; his researches into regimental history have taken him to South Africa, India, Gallipoli and the European battlefields of the two World Wars. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 5

EDITORIAL

The presentation of the first Roland Mathias prize in March 2005 attracted considerable attention in Brecon and further afield and it seemed appropriate that the journal of the society which organised the occasion should include a report on this prestigious event; it is particularly fitting that this is written by the Roland’s son Glyn who is himself a distinguished Breconian.

Once again I am grateful to the Sir John Lloyd Memorial lecturer – this year Professor J. Gwynfor Jones – for agreeing to provide the text of his talk for publication in the journal. 2005 was for most people notable for the 400th anniversary of the Gunpowder Plot but few are aware of the threat posed to the Established Church at the time from extreme Puritans of whom John Penry of Cefnbrith was one of the most notorious.

Penry would have approved of much in Welsh noncomformity which offered a serious challenge to the Anglican church in the nineteenth century. The energetic response of the church in Brecon is examined in an article by the editor. Ken Jones’s account of John Lloyd’s career takes him into the nineteenth century and shows vividly how the new material found recently at Abercynrig adds considerably to our knowledge of Lloyd and the lucrative Indian trade which he pursued.

The houses at Dorlangoch which Martin Everett describes will be familiar to many people but they may not realise that they are another link in Brecon’s long association with the regular army and its imperial campaigns.

The article in last year’s journal on the archaeological dig in Brecon was supported by a grant of £500 from the Council for British Archaeology; Powys County Council and Brecon Town Council made grants towards the cost of publishing the current Brycheiniog. Without such assistance publication would be difficult and the contributions from these bodies are gratefully acknowledged. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 6 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 7

OLIVE LOUISE BACON (1911–2005)

Olive Bacon, who died recently, was an esteemed member of the Brecknock Society and Museum Friends who brought a wealth of experience to her support of the Society’s activities. She was born and educated in London, where her family had lived for several generations; her grandfather had fought in the Peninsular War. Secretarial studies at Lycée Français prepared her for entry to the publishing world at Simpkin and Marshall in Pater Noster Square, where she developed her proof-reading skills. She loved the book-trade, but her career was cut short by the bombs which destroyed the entire square. Drafted into hospital organization, she found a deep interest there, and trained as a Hospital Administrator. In this position she played a guiding role with the Daughters of Charity in the developments which changed what had been a Victorian ‘Charity Home for Crippled Boys’ into St Vincent’s, Pinner, a leading specialist orthopaedic hospital. A keen photographer who travelled widely, Olive’s interests in Brecon began with a holiday friendship, leading ultimately to her retirement here in 1980. She became a member of the Brecknock Society and Museum Friends, combining this with an interest in the W.E.A., becoming Local Secretary and Tutor. This led to the presentation of an exhibition in the Museum foyer, Brecon People from the Past, including local wills and inventories. As a Society member she was also available to local schools as a source of the Oral History of war-time London. She worked for many years as a volunteer in the Museum Library, and was a generous donor of artefacts. Brecon Cathedral was the centre of her spiritual life and practice; it also became a subject of serious research and analysis. It was characteristic that her duty as a Welcomer there should lead to the publication of a carefully-researched article: Brecon Cathedral Floor-Stones! She provided much archive material, including original work about masons’ marks there, printed in Brycheiniog volumes XXV and XXVII. To all this she brought her considerable intellectual powers, an enquiring mind, an unusually retentive memory with fast, accurate recall. To the end, she remained keenly interested in the Society, and the future of the Museum. Olive was President of Brecknock Society and Museum Friends during the period 1993–98, which meant a great deal to her.

Sr Bonaveture Kelleher 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 8 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 9

POWYS COUNTY ARCHIVES

2005 has proved to be year full of activity for Powys Archives. Visitor numbers have reached around 1,200, whilst staff have responded to well over 1000 enquiries by email and letter. In the past year we have significantly increased outreach activities across the county. For instance, regular press releases keep new and old users informed about events and new accessions received at the Archives. In addition several news stories about Powys Archives have appeared on BBC Online, and staff have been interviewed on Radio Maldwyn, as well as appearing twice on the HTV evening news to talk about interesting and exciting new deposits placed with the Archives. At the end of 2004 Powys Archives undertook its visitor survey. This has become an annual event in the Archives calendar. Conclusions and comments resulting from the survey are essential as we try and improve and develop the service. Some of the findings for 2004 are as follows: 88% of our visitors come to undertake research for personal interest such as family or house history; 26% are new users and intend to return; 52% of those who come to Powys Archives travel from within Powys. In 2003 this figure was only 29% – evidence that our increased out-reach activities across the county are working; 58% of our visitors are over 60 years of age. Younger people, 44 years and under, still do not use Powys Archives regularly; 82% of those surveyed think staff are friendly, 85% helpful and 72% knowledgeable. Additional comments were also invited and the overwhelming majority of these concentrated on lack of space for researchers, the over-crowded searchroom and lack of facilities for visitors. Following grant funding from CyMAL (the Welsh Assembly advisory body for Museums, Archives and Libraries) to purchase display boards, Archives staff put together a small exhibition which toured around selected libraries in Powys between November 2004 and April 2005. “Literary Associations with Powys” was its theme, using documentary evidence from the Archives. It featured authors and poets with associations with the three old counties of Breconshire, Radnorshire and Montgomeryshire. The images used from Powys Archives included a letter from J.M. Barrie, creator of Peter Pan, who corresponded with the Lewis family of Milford Hall in Newtown; a title deed signed by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, who was party to a conveyance in Radnorshire; and an entry relating to the poet T. Harri Jones (the “poor man’s Dylan Thomas”) in the Llanafan school admission register. Anna Page, Trainee Archivist, appeared in a short interview for HTV Wales Evening News, in which she spoke about this exhibition. Powys Archives undertook a conservation survey in November of last year with the help of a professional conservator. The funding for this project was also awarded by CyMAL. As we await the final report, preliminary findings are as 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 10

10 Brycheiniog follows: 100% of our storage facilities need to be improved, including environmental monitoring and conditions; conservation work needs to address 84.63% of unstable archival documents (compared to a UK figure of 12.12%); boxing or other packaging is needed for 60.98% of our collections; 37.56% of our records need improved security (mainly a problem with our outstores); 52.19% of our collections have either medium or high use (UK figure 29.59%); 91.71% of our collections are catalogued (UK figure 75.69%); 98.29 of our collection is damaged in some way; physical (eg torn pages), chemical (eg corrosive ink) and biological (eg insects/animal) (UK figure 71.29%); 98.78% has surface dirt (UK figure 54.26%) warranting a cleaning programme as a priority. The report concludes “in general Powys County Archives Office’s collection care is not good and the majority of preservation management factors that reduce the risk to a collection are not in place, namely storage, secondary protection, environmental monitoring and conditions, and these need addressing.” Following on from the conservation survey and the recommendation to undertake a priority cleaning programme, Lindsay Smith was appointed during the summer to clean certain collections of surface dirt and mould. Lindsay was employed over a twelve week period, and along with Archives staff, received training from a professional conservator on how to use specialist conservation cleaning equipment. During her time in post Lindsay managed to clean in excess of 400 volumes, some of which were previously unusable by members of the public due to health and safety issues with mould and dirt. In July we proceeded with our final, and perhaps most important, project funded with a grant from CyMAL, and appointed two consultants from the Atkins Consultancy firm. Hugh Edgar and Ian Milford, specialists in archive accommodation, were commissioned to look at all the different accommodation options for Powys Archives. As many of you will know Powys Archives has significantly outgrown its current building, both in terms of facilities for the public, and suitability and space for our collections. The Atkins consultants, before the end of 2005, will write a report, which they will then present to the Powys County Council members, outlining their recommendations for the future of Powys Archives. This exciting project is the first step in a long process to try and achieve better facilities for the service. Powys Libraries, Archives and Information Service was involved this year with the BBC’s People’s War project. Essentially the BBC created a website which aimed to collect World War Two stories and recollections from across Britain, and they encouraged official bodies, organisations and volunteer groups to get involved and help record memories for the website. As a result Powys Library service held a series of talks in Brecon, Newtown and Llandrindod Wells over the spring and summer of this year, on what can be revealed about this period’s history from records held at the Powys Archives. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 11

Reports 11 Following on from this, Powys Archives held a very successful Open Day on 24 September, the theme for the day being World War Two. The BBC Wales Bus attended the day, and BBC staff were on hand to record WW2 memories and stories. In total seventy three visitors came to the Open Day, they were taken on a tour of the premises and enjoyed the small display of WW2 documents from the Archive’s collections. This year we again received invaluable help from seven volunteers, without whom the day would not be possible. Anna Page, Trainee Archivist with Powys Archives continues her archives training in the form of a distance-learning course with the University of Wales Aberystwyth. Powys Library, Information and Archives Service continues to financially support Anna through this course. Over the past year she has completed a number of essays and assignments covering topics such as electronic records, local studies collections in local authority libraries and the records of the Great Sessions of Wales, with particular reference to Montgomeryshire. She has also attended two study schools. The first was at Aberystwyth, and was a week devoted to Palaeography – the reading and transcribing of old documents. The second was a field trip to London to visit national and specialist repositories. With the other students from the distance-learning course, Anna visited the National Archives, the Victoria & Albert Museum design archive, and the archives at the Guildhall and the Rothschild Bank. The Friends of Powys Archives, which was established in January 2004, continues to attract new members. To date over 150 individuals, families or societies have joined. Our quarterly newsletter, Almanac, continues to go to all Friends, Council Members, libraries and secondary schools. A number of talks have been held, including joint meetings with the Radnor Group of PFHS. A small number of Friends are also transcribing and indexing several school log books, by working on digitised copies of these volumes at home. Angela Jones from Guernsey has completed the transcription of two Newchurch school log books dating from 1880–1936, and Dorothy Baynham from Llandrindod has transcribed the Llanbister Cantal log books 1879–1930. There are other Friends from Exeter, Caerphilly, Llandrindod Wells and Hereford working on additional school records. Powys Archives held three teacher placement days in February, June and October of 2005. These were organised in partnership with Careers Wales. To date 28 teachers from schools around Powys have attended, and throughout the days we concentrated on workshops using different sources, including census returns, parish registers, OS maps and school log books. Feedback from the day was extremely positive and we hope to continue developing links with schools. Another placement day for teachers has been planned for February next year. Finally Catherine Richards has relinquished her position as secretary of the Welsh County Archivists’ Group and has become Chair from October this year. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 12

12 Brycheiniog The group meets twice a year to discuss matters of particular relevance to Welsh archive services. Powys Archives 2004–2005 Annual Report was published in April. This summarises the work undertaken by staff and a full list of accessions received. Details of accessions received during 2005 with particular reference to Breconshire are as follows:

PUBLIC AND OFFICIAL RECORDS Altered apportionment of Tithe Rentcharge under the Tithe Acts 1836 to 1918 for Llanwrthwl, 1922 [Acc 1561] Four pages from the tithe apportionment for Llyswen parish, 1839 [Acc 1570] Records relating to the Usk River Authority’s proposals for a reservoir in the upper Usk Valley, Breconshire, and reservoirs in the Cilieni, Bran, Yscir, Senni and Cynrig valleys 1968–70 [Acc 1580] Breconshire Magistrates’ Courts registers 1991–2003 [Acc 1585] Powys County Council bound minute books 1990–2004 [Acc 1586] Register of Magistrates for Powys, 1949–1982. Licensing registers, Breconshire & Radnorshire Magistrates’ Courts 1950–1993. List of cases of poor prisoners, Ystradgynlais 1950-1960. Bank reconciliation books, Brecon 1969–1984. Juvenile register, Ystradgynlais 1984; Crickhowell Court minute book 1986–1988 [Acc 1596] Marriage registers for: St David’s Old Parish Church, Llanwrtyd 1971–1997. Llanfihangel Abergwesyn – Eglwys Oen Duw, 1987–2003 [Acc 1611] Parish records for Llanfihangell Bryn Pabuan: minutes of parish meeting and parish council, account books, OS maps showing parish boundaries and correspondence 1894–1972 [Acc 1613] Forestry Commission District Officers’ maps of Crychan and Tywi Forests, Breconshire & Radnorshire, pre 1950. Second War revision 1” OS maps, sheets 79, 80, 90, 91, showing blocks of forestry 1940 [Acc 1616] Records from Trecastle British Board/CP School 1943–2005 [Acc 1623]

NON-OFFICIAL RECORDS Photographs relating to Sennybridge, 1912–1997. Correspondence & family history notes of the Jones family, Dorallt, Cwmwysg, Trecastle, 1926–27 [Acc 1569] Photograph of children and mistress of Llandyfalle National School, c1931 [Acc 1564] CD of scanned photographs of Llandyfalle National schoolchildren, with lists of names 1910–1970. Presentation to headmistress 1925 and Talachddu ploughing match c1930. Hardcopies of lists of names; 1910–1933 [Acc 1573] Records of the Brecknock Association for the Welfare of the Blind: minutes, correspondence & circulars 1957–1999 [Acc 1572] 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 13

Reports 13 Plan of Cefn Troescoed and Clynmercher Isaf farms, Ystradfellte, c1840 [Acc 1582] Rent roll for the estate of Mrs Mary Watters of Brecon 1726 [Acc 1588] Photographs of Breconshire chapels, with descriptions 1990s [Acc 1591] Records of William Beales & Co, Solicitors of Hay-on-Wye, c1750–1938: Lordships of Upper & Lower Elvel, Hay and Builth, and Boughrood Charity. Court Leet rolls, rent books, Tithe book, deeds, petitions. Papers of Sir Joseph Bailey and Lord Glanusk [Acc 1593] Llandefalle School: Group photographs 1910–1970, on CD-rom and in spiral bound hard copy. Copies of photographs of Upper Chapel & Garthbrengy tenants, c 1895 and Upper Chapel Choir 1943, with genealogical notes [Acc 1599] Miscellaneous title deeds; canal plans; conveyances of land for canals; toll allocations Breconshire [Acc 1607] Collection of postcards, in 2 albums of: Llanwrtyd Wells, Builth Wells, Llangammarch Wells; the Elan Valley, Radnorshire. Late C19th & early C20th [Acc 1608] Photographs and postcards of Sennybridge and district c1927–1936. Photographs of Land Army girls in Sennybridge district c1940 [Acc 1621] Lease relating to properties in Llanddeti, Llangynidr and Cathedine, 1737 [Acc 1627] Copy of a photograph of the children and teachers of Castell Madog British/Non-Provided School, Lower Chapel 1925 [Acc 1635]

CATHERINE RICHARDS Archives Manager 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 14 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 15

THE ROYAL REGIMENT OF WALES MUSEUM, BRECON (The South Wales Borderers Museum Trust)

The Regimental Museum’s main function remains the provision of services to the public through maintaining – and enhancing access to – its unique collection of material relating to the local regiment. To fulfil this function, the museum staff continue to undertake a wide range of activities. These include involvement in the community, enhancing our professional and subject-specific knowledge, and co-operation with other organisations both locally and in the wider museum profession. We are pleased to be involved with many local initiatives. A loan box of World War Two artefacts was provided for Brecon Library as part of their successful “People’s War” exhibition, Abergavenny Museum borrowed a loan box for their VE Day exhibition, and a loan box plus museum images was used in the travelling exhibition “Veterans Reunited” (organised by the Imperial War Museum and the National Library of Wales) when it was launched in Merthyr Tydfil. Customer Services Manager Celia Green and museum attendant Sylvia Davies ran a merchandise and information stall in the Gurkha Durbar at Dering Lines. Liaison with Brecon Access Group has contributed to improved public access within the museum. Involvement with Brecon Action saw curator Martin Everett welcome local accommodation providers on the Heritage Town Walk, encouraging tourist businesses to work together in publicising Brecon’s attractions. A Theatr Brycheiniog exhibition of Lynda Shell’s prints and textiles entitled “For Valour” – inspired by the Zulu War collection at the regimental museum – was accompanied by Martin Everett’s talk on “British Gallantry Medals”. Other lectures on a range of topics associated with the museum have been given to many groups throughout Powys and south and mid Wales by the curator and by volunteers Bill Cainan and Duncan McDonald from the 1879 Re-enactment Group. Another significant link with the local community and beyond is the museum’s flourishing education programme. Workshops on World War Two and the Victorian Soldier are closely tailored to National Curriculum requirements, emphasise investigative skills and hands-on learning, and are regularly evaluated and updated. School groups, cadet groups, special needs groups, and adult groups from a wide area are all welcomed. Visitors with special needs particularly enjoy artefact handling. This year we welcomed our 11,000th educational visitor, who was from St Joseph’s Catholic Primary School in Brecon. As part of Museums and Galleries Month in May the regimental museum hosted a weekend event, “Supreme Gallantry”, the highlight of which was a remarkable display of nine of the eleven original Victoria Crosses awarded at Rorke’s Drift. The seven VCs awarded to the 24th Regiment were shown 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 16

16 Brycheiniog together for the first time. These unique medal displays – the result of lengthy behind-the-scenes negotiations with medal-owners and other museums – plus a fascinating lecture programme with speakers from South Africa and the UK attracted hundreds of visitors to Brecon. A commemorative booklet, What Happened to the Heroes? (available from the museum shop) was produced with part- funding from the Welsh Assembly Government. Professional co-operation with other bodies often involves sharing information. Len Pole concluded his study of the regimental museum’s collections for the “Survey of Non-European Ethnographic Collections in Welsh Museums”, confirming the value of the collection not only to the regiment’s history but also multi-culturally. Significant items have come from Sudan, Palestine, India, Nigeria, Eritrea, Borneo, and Malaya as well as South Africa – with a greater number of items of personal adornment than weapons. Research into regimental campaigns is ongoing. Martin Everett and Celia Green toured Gallipoli in the footsteps of the 2nd and 4th Battalions South Wales Borderers, and Celia briefed HRH Prince Charles’ office prior to the Prince of Wales (Colonel-in-Chief of the regiment) visiting the peninsula. The curator continues his regular research at the Medal Office, and extends his knowledge of the MODES cataloguing system so information about the collection can be recorded in an appropriate and accessible way. An exciting project in progress is his collaboration with David Rattray of Fugitive’s Drift Lodge on a book about the Zulu War sketches of Lt W. W. Lloyd (1/24th). The curator also assists David Rattray with his London lectures, generating interest in the museum and visitors to Brecon. The museum welcomes donations of any artefacts, documents and ephemera associated with the regiment and its soldiers, and appreciates all offers of material. Acquisitions this year have included 1918 photographic plates of the headstones in Mhow of Brecknock Battalion soldiers who died there of influenza in World War One; 17 sets of medals, including a Distinguished Conduct Medal and others to CSgt John Lewis Jones 2/SWB (Boer War); an album of photos relating to 1/SWB in Singapore and Aden 1958; and documents relating to Pte David Thomas Knight 1/SWB, prisoner-of-war in Stalag IVB 1942–45. Acquisitions are catalogued on the MODES computer system, and items not on permanent display are stored to conservation standards. The professional conservation of W. H. Duggan’s picture “The Defence of Rorke’s Drift” has recently been completed with the aid of a grant from CyMAL [sic], the Welsh Assembly Government body responsible for museums, libraries and archives. Staff training is undertaken with the twin aims of serving the public and looking after the collection. Celia Green passed a four-day First Aid course, and four other staff are qualified in Emergency First Aid at Work. Sylvia Davies was our representative on the Disability Discrimination Act training days run by 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 17

Reports 17 Brecon Action. Education Advisor Alison Hembrow completed her Master of Arts degree in Museum Studies with the University of Leicester, and maintains a programme of Continuing Professional Development as an Associate of the Museums Association (AMA). Martin Everett attended the Welsh briefing session of the Museums Association’s Accreditation scheme (an updating of the previous Registration system of ensuring museums work to professional standards) at the Wales Millennium Centre, and has subsequently helped other regimental museums update policies to meet the required standards of documentation. The museum has been in a position to assist both the Army Museums Ogilby Trust (AMOT) and the Ministry of Defence Museums Branch with policy documents by providing, for instance, our Child Protection Policy, Risk Assessment, and educational material as examples of good practice. Alison Hembrow’s research findings on the staffing of UK regimental museums have been distributed and discussed with other institutions. The museum continues to deal with hundreds of queries from researchers in person, by telephone, by post, and by e-mail. Media researchers have included S4C’s Primetime (on Isandhlwana and Rorke’s Drift), BBC Radio Wales interviewing Martin Everett for The Truth About (on the Zulu Wars colours); and Aspect Television filming Jamie Owen’s Welsh Journeys for the BBC. The curator also provided live commentary for BBC Radio Wales’ coverage of the 60th Anniversary VE Day events in Cardiff. The increasing numbers of hits on the museum’s website and enquiries via e- mail emphasise the importance of our internet presence. The curator has attended an MOD web-design course, and is working with Beaver Design on a re-launch of the website for 2006. This will give a fresh look with added content, including a site “search” facility, Welsh language pages, and an extended genealogy section to help family researchers (e.g. medal rolls, muster rolls, location lists). Our e-commerce has already been extended with the addition of a second-hand book section to the popular on-line store. The new website will feature maps and detailed directions to the museum, as Brecon’s new road system and lack of signage currently make it difficult for many visitors to locate the museum. This year’s visitors have included Carol Whittaker of CyMAL, Colonel Tony Figg (Head of MOD’s Regimental Museums Branch), General Harry Bendorf (US Army), and Leslie Smurthwaite and Natalia Wieczorek (National Army Museum). We were also delighted to welcome a party of pupils and teachers from L’École Edwards-Griffiths from Mondrainville in Normandy accompanied by the town’s mayor: the school is named after two members of the 2nd Battalion of the Monmouthshire Regiment who fought there during the Normandy landing battles of 1944. The curator astonished the party by producing from the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 18

18 Brycheiniog photographic archive an image of the mayor’s house, taken by a member of the regiment in 1944. We are grateful to all who support the museum and help it remain an important resource to the community: visitors, customers, donors, grant-giving bodies, Friends of the museum, the regiment, and vital volunteers Fred Antell, Alan Baynham-Jones, Yvonne Callaghan, Tom Phillips and Arfon Williams. St David’s Day 2006 will see the amalgamation of The Royal Regiment of Wales with The Royal Welch Fusiliers into the new regiment, The Royal Welsh. The three regimental museums will remain at Caernarfon, Cardiff and Brecon, with the history and traditions of the “Old 24th” and the South Wales Borderers continuing to be proudly represented here in Brecon.

The Royal Regiment of Wales Museum, The Barracks, The Watton, Brecon LD3 7EB Telephone 01874 613310 Fax 01874 613275 E-mail [email protected] Website www.rrw.org.uk/museums

ALISON HEMBROW 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 19

THE ROLAND MATHIAS PRIZE

The gestation of the Roland Mathias Prize was a desire on the part of my father to make a contribution to the future of Welsh writing in English. He had played a significant role in establishing Welsh writing in English as a distinctive literary genre, and the extent to which it is now flourishing is in no small part due to the impetus he helped to give it. Dr Sam Adams, editor of The Collected Poems of Roland Mathias (University of Wales Press, 2002) made this assessment. “Roland Mathias is widely considered one of the foremost men of letters to have emerged in Wales in the second half of the twentieth century, and in the front rank of poets. The bulky volumes of The Anglo-Welsh Review, an invaluable showcase of creative and critical work, which he edited without assistance from 1961 until 1973, testify to his determination to obtain a proper estimation of Welsh writing in English”. My father went on to become Chairman of the English Language Section of Yr Academi Gymreig, and, from 1976 until 1979, Chairman of the Welsh Arts Council’s Literature Committee. “In both capacities,” says Dr Adams, “he was an indefatigable worker in the cause of bridging the gap that then existed between English and Welsh language writers and promoting both.” Now aged 90, my father was born in a farm called Ffynnon Fawr in Glyn Collwn above Talybont-on-Usk. The farmhouse was abandoned when the valley was flooded for the reservoir built between the two world wars, and it was no coincidence that one of his volumes of poetry was entitled The Flooded Valley:

My house is empty but for a pair of boots: The reservoir slaps at the privet hedge and uncovers the roots And afterwards pats them up with a slack good will: The sheep that I market once are not again to sell.

He wanted the Prize to reflect his own literary output which was not confined to poetry. So in addition, short stories, works of literary criticism about Welsh literature and works of history substantively about Wales were also to be considered for the Prize. In getting the Prize under way, a number of key decisions were taken:

• to set up the Prize under the auspices of the Brecknock Society and Museum Friends, with which my father had long been associated. The Trustees were kind enough to agree to add the Prize to their impressive list of activities. • to set up a committee to administer the £20,000 fund and act as a judging panel. • that the Prize should be £2,000 and awarded every two years. • that only published works by authors born or currently resident in Wales should qualify. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 20

20 Brycheiniog One other fundamental decision had to be made early on: was the Prize to be based in Brecon or should the award ceremony be held in Cardiff and perhaps subsumed in some way with the Welsh Book of the Year? It would have lightened the administrative load and removed many uncertainties to have taken the latter option, but the mood of the Committee was clear. It should be an all- Wales Prize, but should remain based in Brecon. Here I must pay tribute to the panel of judges, who gave a considerable amount of their own time and expertise in order to ensure that the inaugural Prize was a success. The panel consisted of Sam Adams, literary historian Moira Dearnley, novelist and poet Christopher Meredith, myself and two Trustees of the Brecknock Society, Helen Gichard and Peter Powell. All but two of the panel live in the Brecon area. In addition, to bolster our critical faculties for works of Welsh history, we enlisted the support of noted historians Edward Parry, Brynach Parri and David Morgan. Perhaps the biggest problem facing the judging panel was the range of categories specified in the Prize. How do you equate a collection of poetry with, say, a work of literary criticism? The panel devised a process of assessing each work on its own merits, deciding whether it was a potential prizewinner, and only in the latter stages making comparisons across the different categories. In the event, it was the poetry which turned out to be the strongest section, a fact reflected in the shortlist. The most disappointing section was probably the short stories, while the field of Welsh literary criticism is currently rent by a furious argument about the “post-colonial” analysis of Welsh writing – a division of opinion reflected in the panel. In the event, three poets and a historian made up the shortlist. As the Press Release put it: “Writers from Mid Wales, the Llyˆn Peninsula, Cardiff and Aberystwyth have been shortlisted for a major new prize for English language writing from Wales”. Ruth Bidgood, who lives in Powys, was chosen for her New and Selected Poems, published by Seren. She was described by one of the judges as a poet of the raw material of rural life, which she records with all its ballast of recorded and remembered tradition. Patrick McGuiness, an Oxford don who lives in Cardiff, was shortlisted for The Canals of Mars, published by Carcanet. The panel described him as an interesting new poet, astoundingly good at times, cerebral, playful and challenging. David Ceri Jones, a Research Fellow at the University of Wales, Aberystwyth, was shortlisted for A Glorious Work in the World: Welsh Methodism and the International Evangelical Revival 1735–1750, published by the University of Wales Press. Described as impressive, scholarly and thorough, it focused on the links between Welsh Methodists, particularly Howel Harris, and the wider evangelical movement. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 21

The Roland Mathias Prize 21

Christine Evans receiving the prize-winning cheque from Roland Mathias.

But after a very close decision, the first Roland Mathias Prize was awarded to Christine Evans for her Selected Poems, published by Seren. She lives on the Llyˆn peninsula and spends much of the summer on Bardsey. And it is life on the island – Enlli, the island of saints – which empowers and drives some her richest poetry.

We slide in on an oiled keel, step ashore with birth-wet, wind-red faces wiping the salt from our eyes and notice sudden, welling quiet, and how here the breeze lets smells of growing things settle and grow warm.

She herself has described Bardsey as ‘a tiny community of individuals, thrown together as on a voyage’. The judging panel commended the ability of Christine Evans to define and celebrate place, and express a strong sense of the continuity of human occupation. This was an impressive collection reflecting the development of her work over many years. The award ceremony was staged in the Guildhall in Brecon in March 2005, with the invaluable support of BBC Wales. All four shortlisted writers agreed to 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 22

22 Brycheiniog be present and read extracts from their work, which made for a dramatic finale. Professor Wynn Thomas, Professor of English at the University of Wales, Swansea, was there to give his elegant appreciation of the works submitted for the Prize, and then announce the winner to the audience of about 130 people. It was indeed a very literary day for the town of Brecon. On that same afternoon, a poetry reading session had been organised, which took place in the Museum. The room was packed to the full for readings by Sheenagh Pugh, Jeremy Hooker, Grahame Davies and our panel member, Chris Meredith. All in all, it had been a successful inauguration of the Roland Mathias Prize. The next Prize will be awarded in the Spring of 2007 and the criteria will remain the same. Books have to be submitted for consideration by December 22, 2006, with three copies of each work supplied for consideration by the panel. All correspondence and submitted books should be sent to: Brecknock Society and Museum Friends, The Roland Mathias Prize, c/o Brecknock Museum and Gallery, Captain’s Walk, Brecon LD3 7OW.

GLYN MATHIAS 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 23

JOHN PENRY: THE EARLY BRECKNOCKSHIRE PURITAN FIREBRAND

The first person, since the Reformation, who made any determined attempt to evangelise Wales was the martyred John Penry . . . Thus lived and thus died the pioneer of Welsh nonconformity whose good name, for ages, has been blackened by the foul misrepresentations of bigoted or ignorant historians.1

These are the words of the Revd Dr Thomas Rees, in his day a celebrated Congregationalist minister and historian whose History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales was published in 1861. In these words he grossly exaggerates John Penry’s short career. Rees, of course, was a powerful nonconformist leader himself, and had his own reasons for defending Penry as a Welsh Puritan, but modern historians, such as Patrick Collinson, Donald McGinn and Sir Glanmor Williams, assessing his career more objectively, whilst acknowledging his Welsh connections and patriotism, regard him primarily as an early leader of some standing in the English Puritan movement.2 Given Thomas Rees’s background and enthusiasm for recording the history of his own denomination, together with the new national spirit that was emerging in Wales of his generation, his euology fits in ideally with the kind of praise accorded Penry as the ‘prototype of the strenuous Welsh nonconformist’ and the hero and martyr projected by his earliest biographers, John Waddington, Champlin Burrage, Sir Owen M. Edwards, Albert Peel, William Pierce and others.3 John Penry was a contentious person, a restless individual whose career was focused entirely on his view and interpretation of the ‘Church of God’ on earth. This native of Brecknockshire, who, as he stated, was ‘born and bred in the mountains of Wales’, who was converted to Presbyterianism at Cambridge, and then driven by his conscience to become a Separatist during a period of three years in Scotland before joining a small band of Independents in London in 1592, became a committed Puritan. His almost obsessive concern for the reform of the Elizabethan Church formed part of his unyielding desire to see established what he and his fellow Puritans interpreted as the true Church of God. His arguments, which appeared fully in his three treatises concerning Wales in 1587–8 were in line with Puritan propaganda and formed a regional dimension to God’s Church as envisaged by him.4 Penry’s main aim was to promote a Puritanism which persistently called for drastic reform of the Church, particularly the employment of a learned preaching ministry.5 At Peterhouse he read the works of Bishop John Bale, the radical Protestant reformer, and Thomas Cartwright, Professor of Divinity at Cambridge, and adopted a strict Calvinist theology.6 Although Penry appears not to have had detailed knowledge of the condition of the Welsh Church in his day, he had obviously accumulated 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 24

24 Brycheiniog sufficient material so as to expose the deficiencies which hampered its progress in Wales after the Elizabethan Settlement. Although aware of the inadequacies of that Church, his concern was mainly the spiritual deficiencies of his follow countrymen, which arose mostly from impoverished conditions. Where he obtained that knowledge it is difficult to tell for he is known to have visited Wales only once, in 1584–5, after his departure from Cambridge, and his contacts in Wales who might have informed him of religious affairs were few. In his day and age Welsh sources, where they existed, did not regard him as a religious leader of any importance. It is only George Owen of Pembrokeshire who refers to him, slightingly, dismissing his statement that Wales was poorly endowed with preachers of the gospel. In his ‘Dialogue of the Government of Wales’ he disagreed with Penry’s comments on the lack of a preaching ministry in Wales and stated that Pembrokeshire had up to ten more ‘Godly and lerned ministers and Preachers of the Gospell’, far more than the other counties in Wales:

This last happynes allso I haue spoken to confounde a shameles mann that of late yeres to the Sclaunder of all Wales hath not stickt to put furth in Prynte that all Wales had not soe many Preachers of Goddes woorde as I haue Reckoned to bee founde in this Poore and little Contrie of Pembroksheere and yett was there at such tyme as he wrote his Sclaunderouse Pamphelett diuerse others beside beneficed in this contrye which seethence are departed Remoued or deceased.7

Vavasor Powell, that fiery seventeenth-century Puritan, however, regarded him and Henry Barrow, a separatist propagandist and friend of John Greenwood, a Norfolk clergyman turned separatist, as his fathers in the faith.8 The extent of his concern for Wales and, in a broader context, the nature of his true loyalties, have been questioned, whether they were with Wales or his adopted Puritanism. Doubtless, as Sir Glanmor Williams and other historians have demonstrated, he showed a high regard for his country and for the spiritual welfare of its people, but his remarkably short career as a Puritan agent exposed broader aspects which tied him to a religious movement which, in due course, was to have a significant impact on Protestant dissent.9 John Penry came to the fore in the 1580s, the decade which saw two major forces militate against the uniformity which Elizabethan government wished to establish, namely the increase in Roman Catholic recusancy and the foreign threats of invasion associated with it, and the Puritan action-plan designed to advance reforms on a Presbyterian basis. The religious settlement was made law by the first two statutes of Supremacy and Uniformity, of the Queen’s first parliament. It was a secular settlement and its framework had to prove its success, which depended on the government’s ability to overcome its religious problems and on the Queen’s survival.10 The Thirty-nine Articles based on the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 25

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 25 Forty-two Articles of 1553 were imposed and the settlement adopted the south German or Swiss patterns of reform, containing features of Lutheranism, Zwinglianism and Calvinism. Thus arose disputes over the degree and nature of reform that were acceptable to all. Attempts were made to keep the settlement intact, but extremists on both sides – Roman Catholic and Protestant – created dissensions that could never be reconciled. Let us place Penry in his background. He was born, it is believed, at Cefnbrith on the northern slopes of the Epynt mountains in 1563, the son of Meredith Penry, a substantial freeholder who was reputedly descended from Elystan Glodrydd, one of the founders of the five royal tribes of Wales.11 Some doubt has been cast on this supposed location because there appears to be no strict evidence to substantiate the claim that he was born there. What can be said is that a branch of the Penry family lived at Cefnbrith and that has subsequently been taken as sufficient proof. There is no knowledge of his early education but it is possible that he attended a school opened by a local clergyman at nearby Llangamarch and later at Christ College, Brecon, founded in 1541 from the property of the dissolved collegiate church at Abergwili and established on the site of the Dominican convent in Brecon.12 That college provided good classical education, and John Penry might well have profited from it before leaving for Peterhouse, Cambridge, as a Pensioner in 1580 where he graduated in the arts in 1584.13 It appears that his mother, whom he highly respected, financially supported him for in his letter to his four daughters shortly before his execution he referred to the assistance she had given him:

If ever you are able shew all forwardness in doing good unto my people and kindred in the flesh . . . Repay the kindness . . . which I owe unto my nearest kindred there, as to my Mother, Brethren, Sister etc . . . And be an especial comfort in my stead unto the grey hairs of my poor Mother, whom the Lord used as the only means of my stay for me in my beginning up at my studies, whereby I have come unto the knowledge of that most precious Faith in Christ Jesus.14

It was there that he was influenced by Puritan tendencies that were already well rooted at Cambridge.15 It is doubtful that he was an unyielding Roman Catholic when he went to Cambridge although the author of An Almond for a Parrat regarded him ‘as arrant a papist as euer came out of wales’. He continued:

I am to tel you how laudibly he behaued himselfe in Peterhouse, during the time of his subsistership . . . I tell you I[Penry] a[nd] P[erne] in those daies would haue ran a false gallop ouer his beades with anie man in England, and helpt the Priest for a shift to saie Masse at high midnight.16

He himself does not mention his early religious affiliations but it can be assumed that the family clung to the traditional faith. On leaving Cambridge in 1584 he 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 26

26 Brycheiniog spent time partly at Northampton, a city where Puritanism was again strongly entrenched, and partly in his native Brecknockshire. Hardly any evidence exists to prove that but it is believed that his first treatise on Wales, The Aequity of an Humble Supplication, published in the spring of 1587, was prepared by him there, which may explain the facts used by him to explain the condition of the church in Wales.17 In the autumn of 1585 he entered St Alban Hall, Oxford, where he graduated Master of Arts in the following year, but he did not proceed to ordination probably because of his strong Calvinist beliefs and his dissatisfaction with the condition of the church, particularly the lack of a preaching ministry.18 After spending a month in prison for his Aequity, having appeared before Archbishop John Whitgift in the Court of High Commission, Penry’s subsequent career led him to publish harsh commentaries on the church, thereby strengthening his links with Puritan leaders and publishers. He attached himself to individuals such as Job Throckmorton of Haseley, a Warwickshire squire and member of parliament,19 Edward Dunn Lee, member of parliament for Carmarthen boroughs who had family connections with the Joneses of Abermarlais and the Dwnns of Cydweli,20 Sir Richard Knightley of Fawsley, John Udall of Kingston, preacher and Puritan controversialist, and Robert Waldegrave, a Presbyterian printer. Most of his time was spent in the midlands, particularly at Northampton, where he joined the Puritan classis (a conference of local Puritan clergy which formed the basis of a national Presbyterian framework) and met there his future wife Helen (or Eleanor) Godley, a member of a strong Puritan family in that city.21 It was during the critical years 1587–8 that he wrote his famous treatises on Wales before departing for Edinburgh where he finally abandoned his Presbyterianism (having had doubts about what it could achieve while Elizabeth was on the throne) and, on his return to London in September 1592, attaching himself to the separatist church established by Henry Barrow and John Greenwood at St Nicholas Lane, the minister being Francis Johnson, a contemporary of Penry at Cambridge.22 Although it had been his wish to return from Scotland to evangelise his native Wales, it was in London that he spent his last days, where he was eventually charged with using seditious words against the Queen under the Act of Uniformity (1559) and the Act preventing seditious words and rumours against the Queen (1580–1).23 An offence of that kind was not normally punishable by the death penalty so that Penry’s sentence and hanging on 29 May 1593 at St Thomas a Watering (near the Old Kent Road) at the age of 30, was arguably unjust. His end, however, was pitiable, for he left a widow and four young daughters. Penry’s main treatises on Wales were written with much intensity. There is no evidence to prove that he had seen or read any episcopal reports, for example, by Richard Davies, and Marmaduke Middleton, the contents of which supported his observations.24 It is doubtful that he had seen William Bleddyn’s cautionary 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 27

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 27 speech to the prebendaries at Llandaff (1575),25 Richard Price of Brecon’s letter to Sir William Cecil (1575) censuring the laxity of the clergy in his native Brecknockshire,26 the anonymous report on the condition of religious life in that shire (1586)27 and the damning report (1587) on the diocese of St Asaph and William Hughes, its notorious bishop.28 The 1586 report drew attention to the serious neglect of religious services in Brecknockshire churches, to the impropriation of most livings in the shire, and to the lack of preachers and competent ministers:

In all Breconshire are very few spiritual livings or parsonages but are impropriate, and in those few not one preacher. But ignorant and unlearned stipendiary curates do serve two, some three parishes. So that in most country parishes if upon Sundays and high holy days, some part of the morning prayer be said (and that in such posting manner that the hearers are little or nothing the better for it) seldom or never is there any evening prayer: Neither in the week days (no, not in Lent) is any service said at all; and many times for a want of a minister those parishioners are fain to bury the dead themselves.29

The dire condition of the church in Wales, however, was common knowledge, and the abuses, many of them stemming from its poverty, were known to have hindered its progress during the Reformation.30 In his report to the Privy Council (1570) Richard Davies, bishop of St David’s, stated that lay impropriations were rife and seriously undermined the quality of religious life in the diocese.31 He failed to find sufficient preachers and teachers in the diocese unless he offered them more than one living. He had ten ministers in the diocese in 1570, and of those three only, it is believed, could preach in Welsh, which was essential, namely Richard Davies himself, Thomas Huet, chancellor and canon of St David’s and translator of the Book of Revelation into Welsh, and Morris Price, vicar of Nantmel, Radnorshire.32 Richard Price (son of Sir John Price), echoed a similar comment when he said that there were ‘scarce ii learned and sufficient pastors’ in Brecknockshire and a slender reading ministry, each priest serving two or three parishes, ‘whereby the common people are so rude and ignorant in the most necessary points of the Christian faith that over many of them cannot as much as say the Lord’s Prayer and Articles of Belief in any language that they understand’.33 In view of the dire condition of the church, Penry went so far as to declare that spiritual regeneration was an almost impossible task in Wales. ‘My brethren’, he declared, ‘for the most part know not what preaching meaneth, much less thinke the same necessarie to saluation . . . For our estate is such, that we haue not one in some score of our parishes, that hath a sauing knowledge. Thousands there be of our people that know Iesus Christ to be neither God nor man, king, priest nor prophet . . . our people are either such as neuer think of anie religion true or false, plainly mere Atheists or stark blinded with 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 28

28 Brycheiniog superstition.’34 He severely attacked Roman Catholic superstitions and practices, the deceptions of ‘Rhomish Antichrist’, idolatry, blasphemy and the cult of the Virgin Mary.35 Twenty years or so earlier Nicholas Robinson, Bishop of Bangor, on his coming to his see informed Sir William Cecil, the Queen’s Secretary of State, of the dire conditions in his diocese where he found

Images and aulters standing in churches undefaced, lewde and undecent vigils and watches obserued, much pilgrimage-goying, many candles sett up to ye honour of sainctes, some reliquies yet caried about, and all ye Cuntries full of bedes and knottes, besides diuerse other monumentes of wilfull seruing of God.36

Robinson also emphasized a want of preachers and expressed concern that so few preachers were skilled in the Welsh language.37 It was clearly not Penry who first drew attention to the weaknesses of the church, which essentially arose out of poor social and economic conditions, its poverty, the inferior quality of the clergy and the scarcity of competent preachers. A similar view was taken by Huw Lewys, vicar of Llanddeiniolen in the diocese of Bangor, in 1595. In his preface to Perl Mewn Adfyd he deplored the lack of religious literature in the Welsh language for the use of parishioners and severely chastised incompetent ministers who failed in their duties in the parishes:

Yrawrhon, y diffig hwnn o lyfreu sy in mysc (gida bod y Preladieit ar gwyr eglwysig hwythau yrhann fwyaf yn ddiog yn ei swydd ai galwedigaeth, heb ymarddel a phregethu ac a deongl dirgelwch gair duw i’r bobl, eythr byw yn fudion, ac yn aflafar, fal cwn heb gyfarth, clych heb dafodeu, ne gannwyll dan lestr) yw yr achos paham y mae cymeint o anwybodaeth mewn pethau ysprydawl in mysc: mal y digwydd yn fynych, fod mewn amryw o leoedd, henafgwyr briglwydion, trigeinmlwydd oed, ne fwy, mor ddeillion, ac mor anyscedic, ac na fedrant roi cyfri o bynciau yr ffydd, a’r crefydd Cristnogaidd, mwy na phlant bychain newydd eni. [Now, this deficiency in books amongst us (since most of the prelates and churchmen are lethargic in their office and vocation, not professing to preach and interpreting the mystery of God’s word to the people, but rather mute and harsh, like unbarking dogs, bells without clappers, or a candle under a bushel) is the reason why there is so much ignorance of spiritual things in our midst; as so often happens that in several places, old while-haired men sixty years of age or more, are so blind and so unlearned that they cannot account for the articles of the faith and the Christian religion more than small children newly born.]38

In the Aequity, which is a basic examination of the crisis, it is clear that, as a convert to Presbyterianism, Penry desired that reform should essentially be initiated within the church by the Queen in parliament. ‘If we the people of Wales’, he declared, ‘making our estate known, shall not haue it redressed by this 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 29

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 29 assembly, that then the ouerthrowe and weakning of Christes kingdome is intended thorough this meanes (by them that shall hinder preaching to be graunted vnto vs) our calling adding great strength thereunto.’’39 When it is considered that Richard Price’s father, Sir John Price, had translated scriptural verses into Welsh almost thirty years earlier, in Yny Lhyvyr Hwnn . . . (1546), the first Welsh book to be published, the situation was deplorable.40 Like other commentators he blamed the government for not attending to the essential spiritual needs of the people and repeated the views of others when he declared that uniformity could never be achieved unless the Protestant faith was preached and explained more convincingly to the common people.41 It is this line of attack that John Penry took but the weakness of his argument in this context lies in a lack of sufficient evidence to give it more power and edge which might have made a greater impact on the House of Commons. And this is a key deficiency in Penry’s three treatises concerning Wales. Only on occasions, and even then all the facts cannot be substantiated, did he venture to offer tangible evidence, the main thrust of his writings being an unrelenting attack on the eccesiastical hierarchy rather than an all out attack on the avarice of the gentry who were as much, if not more, to blame in some respects for the depressing circumstances. John Penry echoed much that had already been voiced by critics of the Protestant Church. The content of his writings compared well with those published by his fellow Puritans in England of his day. In fact, the Aequity was composed to strengthen the Presbyterian message regarding the need for reform with special reference to Wales.42 On 27 February 1587, at about the time when Penry presented his treatise, the Presbyterian Bill and Book was reintroduced (an earlier version having appeared in 1585) by Sir Anthony Cope, the new member of parliament for Banbury, intending to establish a Presbyterian system, demanding the abolition of bishops and advocating the formation of a synodical government instead of the Church.43 Penry’s drastic comments about the dire conditions in Wales were probably made in support of that Bill. It is hardly surprising that Edward Dunn Lee and Throckmorton agreed to present it to the Commons, for it was Dunn Lee who planned with Throckmorton to use Penry for this purpose and who, possibly, obtained much of the material for him. He most probably obtained the support of other Puritan members of parliament and possibly the Puritan earl of Leicester. Dunn Lee’s introductory speech to Penry’s Aequity in the House prepared the way when he referred to ‘the great idolatry begun again in Wales to an idol; of the number of people that resort to it . . . and what ignorance they live in for lack of learned and honest ministers.’44 In due course, that kind of literature caused a stern governmental response. Penry’s pronouncements were overwhelmingly directed towards dealing with the inadequacy of a preaching ministry and he deplored the Queen’s reluctance to 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 30

30 Brycheiniog remedy the situation in her parliament. He underlined the government’s responsibilities to fulfil its duties and was angry that reform had not been introduced. His total displeasure with this state of affairs formed a central theme in his treatises on Wales, each of which presented his case in a lengthy, ponderous, discursive and painfully repetititive style. He heavily criticised the over-indulgence of the higher clergy, and his observations on the lack of preachers are persistently frequent: ‘If it be the wil of the Parliament therfore we shal be bettered, let the word be preached among vs’, he declared, ‘. . . For to that one parish where there is one ordinary quarter sermon, we haue twenty that haue none.’45 Since tithes are paid a preaching ministry should be made available.46 Penry then took a detailed look at features which were relevant to the Welsh religious experience, and drew his inspiration from his close and vigorous attention to his objective. Penry was clearly aware of the need to proclaim the gospel in the Welsh language, and to ensure that necessary reform was carried through. Although he considered that English should be the chief means of propagating the Protestant faith he knew that Welsh was essential if it was to progress in the more isolated areas, particularly of north, mid and west Wales. A Welsh-speaking ministry, he believed, would, in due course create uniformity in the spoken language.47 Equally important in Penry’s view were the few ministers who were competent enough to preach the gospel. He was aware that the universities could provide more than sufficient numbers of ministers who might ease the situation if the Queen and parliament would only provide them with good livings. He was equally aware that a significant decline had occurred in the number of students who desired to enter holy orders, and that those who obtained fellowships were more eager to abandon their academic positions than to enter the ministry because of the moral condition of the church and the insecurity of tenure in livings:

Now alas our Vniuersities decay in number of students. They that are already placed, either dally with their studies, or not apply them at all to diuinity, because they see no end therof. Some bound by reason of their fellowships to enter into the ministry, wil make any shift to be dispenced with, nay they wil giue ouer their places rather than vndergoe this calling.48

If a conscientious priesthood could be installed, the ‘idle’ clergy, who had undermined the appeal of the ministry, would be urged to pursue their tasks more diligently.49 Ministers, however, had no certainty of a living and Penry, in the Aequity, appealed to the Queen in parliament to ensure that competent and learned ministers should be assured of their livings, which would enable them to enjoy worthy positions and fulfil their duties.50 Moreover, pluralism should be abolished and there should be compulsory residence. He deplored the greed of 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 31

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 31 gentry who held six impropriate livings,51 and recommended that one-tenth of the value of every such living in Wales should be used to maintain a teaching minister who would enjoy security as a parish priest and promote the preaching of the gospel.52 Penry even went further, suggesting that use might be made of Welsh-speaking clergy who held livings in England and who might be persuaded to return to serve in Welsh parishes.53 More radically, he observed that there were laymen not educated at universities, but proficient in theology, and even better than some learned priests, who might also be able to undertake the task of preaching.54 One university, he stated, had sent out 3,400 graduates since Elizabeth I’s accession, many of whom during that period might have been employed in the church and 400 of them in Wales: alas, however, less than twelve, he reported, seriously performed their duties.55 Penry proceeded further to tackle the problem of the maintenance of ministers. He wished the Queen to appoint good quality preachers.56 Refusing to undertake this service, he continued, hindered the course of the Reformation and prevented the minister from living comfortably in his parish. Penry utterly rejected the ‘reading ministry’, namely the clergy who were allowed to read the services and administer the sacraments but who were not licensed to preach. In his view, they were unworthy of their office and tarnished the church’s reputation. Some non-preachers, he stated, held three livings, several of them being university students who were non-resident and who came often to ‘fleece’. ‘Non-residencies’, he forcefully maintained, ‘haue cut the throate of our Church . . . it is the very desolation of the Church, the vndoing of the Common wealth, and a demonstratiue token, that the Lorde will watch ouer vs to euill, not to good’.57 A learned ministry could only be achieved if each living was granted to an educated resident minister. Penry considered the reading ministry to be inferior, not only because it did not fulfil the minister’s true role but also because, since not all the scriptures were available in the Welsh language, standards of literacy were in a sad state of decline. Since the Old Testament had not been translated the first lesson in parish churches was read in English to a largely monoglot peasantry. He believed that it might be translated by one person in two years and in a shorter time if more assistance could be given. The shorter books of prophecy in the Old Testament, described by Penry as the ‘small prophets’, could be made available first and read in services to await the remainder of the Old Testament.58 The Queen should see to it that the whole work was translated and published as soon as possible. Dialectical differences should not cause any problems for an effective preaching ministry would create the incentive for the scriptures to be read at home where heads of families would become acquainted with the language.59 English and Welsh versions could also be compared in order that the Welsh might be better understood with the minister’s assistance. Penry’s 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 32

32 Brycheiniog comment on the need for a translation of the whole Bible is difficult to comprehend since it implies either that he knew nothing about William Morgan’s labours in translating the Old Testament or that he deliberately chose to ignore him. Morgan, who was vicar of Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant in the diocese of St Asaph, had undertaken the arduous task of translating the scriptures into Welsh, a work which was published in 1588. Since Penry was aware of the condition of the Welsh Church it is surprising that he had no knowledge of what Morgan was about to complete in the years leading to 1587, when the Aequity appeared. Such inadequacies, Penry continued, led to spiritual destitution and, in that context, he drew an interesting comparison with the dire economic conditions of the time in Wales. Normally, Penry stated, men would sow sufficient corn to sustain the family for a year and would breed enough cattle and sheep to purchase the seed. The poor harvest of 1585, however, had yielded little corn, less bread-corn was sown because of scarcity, and the cattle were destroyed. Consequently, many were reduced to beggary and forced to seek all ways and means of survival; moreover, he declared, as ‘the very sinowe of their mainteinance is gone . . . this famine is for our sinnes, the Lord without our repentaunce saith it shall continue’. ‘As long as the Lords house lieth wast in our land’, he continued, ‘we shall sow but meere salt’. Allowing the Church to remain unreformed sadly created economic havoc among the people. It was interpreted by him to mean God’s punishment of a despairing nation.60 Penry continued his censure of the government in his second treatise, the Exhortation unto the Governours of Wales . . . (1588), in which he addressed Henry Herbert, 2nd earl of Pembroke, who was also educated at Peterhouse, and became Lord President of the Council in the Marches between 1586 and 1601. That Council was the government’s most powerful agency in Wales and the border shires.61 This treatise is more substantial than the first because it dwells in extenso with defining a sanctified Christian ministry.62 It is also more reflective and scripturally based. Penry scurrilously attacked the Church’s negligence and its contempt of God’s ordinance to care for the salvation of the people. It had taken no action, he declared, to curb the appointment of reading ministers who failed to convey true doctrine to their parishioners. The Exhortation drew particular attention to Herbert’s role as chief magistrate in Wales, which was to serve the Church, and he unequivocally challenged Herbert: ‘So, my Lord, with reuerence be it spoken vnto your Honour, if it lie not in you to bring Wales vnto the knowledge of God, or if your leisure will not serue thereto, then bee not the Lorde president thereof.’ 63 If magistrates loved God, he declared, then they should ensure that people in their charge are fed with knowledge and trained by them in the fear of God.64 In the interests of establishing a preaching ministry Penry desired Herbert to dismiss the existing clergy, and even called on him to 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 33

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 33 use good preachers in the region over which he exercised power. ‘Gouernors my lorde’, he stated, ‘must gouerne vnder God. They haue no allowance to be rulers wher the lord is not serued, where he hath no acknowledgement of superioritie, there man hath no commission from him to bear rule.’ 65 Moving on to view what symptoms of spiritual misery were yet evident in Wales Penry emphasized that merely reading the lessons was inadequate. He further declared that, up to that year of Elizabeth’s reign (1588), no shire or town or parish in Wales had maintained a godly minister for a continuous period of six years.66 What parishioners obtained, he continued, was the reading of a few psalms, a few prayers, and a chapter of the New Testament in Welsh (i.e. the original 1567 version), and they were poorly conveyed and not made intelligible to one among ten of the hearers.67 The reasons for that were clear; not only clerical inadequacy but also William Salesbury’s linguistic idiosyncracies in his translation of the New Testament and Book of Common Prayer into Welsh which were published in 1567. In this treatise Penry’s contempt of bishops knew no bounds, thus reflecting his strong Presbyterian beliefs. Dr Thomas Cartwright had declared that episcopal government appointed by civil authority had no basis in scripture. To him they were ‘the verye ground-worke of this our miserable confusion’.68 Whereas vestments and ceremonies had occupied most Puritans in the early years of Elizabeth I’s reign, their opposition to the Prayer Book led to their attack on episcopal authority which they considered to be ungodly. Thomas Cartwright, and Walter Travers, both at Cambridge and leaders of the Presbyterian movement, declared that church ministers should be equal under God. Puritan classes undermined episcopal authority, aiming to establish a Genevan system consisting of ministers and elected elders and a hierarchical structure headed by a National Assembly. The anonymously published Marprelate Tracts (1588–9), coincided with Penry’s invectives and were the most scathing of anti-episcopal literature.69 Whether they were written by John Udall, John Field, Job Throckmorton or John Penry or any other is of lesser importance than the austere message which they conveyed and the damage they could cause. Penry was equally severe. Bishops, he declared, were anti-Christ who allowed rogues to serve the Church. He harshly continued on this theme:

Therefore wo be to the shepheards of Wales . . .which feede themselues, should not the shepheards feed their flocks; you eat the fat and cloath you with the wooll, but you feede not the flocke . . . And I trust in the Lord Iesus, to see his church florish in Wales, when the memorie of Lord-Bishops are buried in hell whence they came.’70

Penry sensibly mentioned no names but at least two among Welsh prelates of his day, namely William Hughes at St Asaph and Marmaduke Middleton at St David’s, might have been foremost in his mind. Penry deplored bishops for not 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 34

34 Brycheiniog attending to the needs of their sees and took issue with them for appointing ‘dumbe ministers’ (an oft used description by him), who ‘villanously prophane the sacraments’ and lived on ‘stealth, sacriledge and the spoile of souls’.71 Since the marks of a true church were the word preached, the right administration of the sacraments and the outward form of church government, Penry vented his spleen on unworthy reading ministers who made sinners of those who received the sacraments at their hands. They had an ‘outward calling’ only’, he stated, ‘whereas the true preaching minister had also an ‘inward calling’.72 ‘There is no minister but a preaching minister by his institution’, he declared, and if there is no preaching minister near at hand parents should seek one from afar to baptize their children. If that is not possible then it is admissible in the sight of God to leave them unbaptized until one is found.73 Although ministers represent the outward calling the true minister essentially possesses a being or life, given only by God, and a birth bestowed by the Church as an instrument of God’s ordinance by virtue of his outward calling.74 Preaching the gospel is a gift not dependent on ordination. They who have not been ordained and who have that gift as well as the life given by God to the minister separate from the outward calling, constitute true preachers. In the introduction to John Penry’s third treatise, A View of some part of such public wants and disorders . . . (1588), also known as A Supplication unto the High Court of parliament, references are made to Dr Robert Some (who became Master of Peterhouse in 1589), a staunch defender of the Elizabethan Church, especially its Calvinist theology, whom Penry regarded as ‘a godly and learned man’, and who responded to his invitation to reply to his fifty-three syllogistical propositions, contained in an appendix to a second impression of the Exhortation which rejected readers as ministers.75 In this treatise Penry examined in some detail what needed to be done to promote godly learning in Wales. He acknowledged that civil government was partly responsible for protecting God’s Church. He also regarded the Queen as a ‘Christian magistrate’ whom he respected, and firmly declared his obedience to her authority over the Church. He then proceeded to examine the duties of the magistrate and define the difference between this secular office, serving the state, and the minister.76 On the one hand, the magistrate had an ‘outward calling’ whereby he was appointed by the Queen’s government to maintain law and order and to perform functions which demand specific skills to discharge the office. The minister, on the other hand, had both an ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ calling for he was ordained, signifying his ‘outward calling’, and given spiritual gifts, his ‘inward calling’. Penry emphasized this in his Exhortation:

. . . in a minister there is required, first an inwarde calling contained in the sufficiencie of gifts, and the willingnesse to practice them: secondly, an outwarde which the church 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 35

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 35 according vnto the ordinaunce of God is to giue onelie where the Lorde will haue it bestowed, and not else-where. This outward calling being once giuen, can be taken away by none but by the Lord, who gaue it. For the calling is not from man . . .77

While the minister’s vocation is prescribed in the Word of God containing gifts and is separated from his ‘outward calling’, those of the magistracy are neither prescribed nor contained nor separated from that calling.78 Penry regarded those who served God in civil government to be His true messengers. Those who did not serve Him increased their status and authority through greed, acquisitiveness and oppression at the expense of others and, in his view, should not be allowed to serve the state. Likewise, those priests who, in Penry’s view, had no ‘inward calling’, should be regarded as unworthy and not allowed to administer the sacraments, thus rejecting the twenty-sixth article of the Thirty-nine articles which stated that ‘neither the effect of Christ’s ordinance [is] taken away by their wickedness, nor the grace of God’s gifts diminished from such as by faith and rightly do receive the Sacraments ministered unto them . . . although they be administered by evil men’.79 Deficiencies in the Church, Penry continued, were to be remedied by parliament delegated to promote God’s glory, and, on a domestic level, heads of families were expected to teach their households in the faith, an advantage which, according to his testimony, he had enjoyed as a child in his own home.80 In this third treatise, inspired by increasing Roman Catholic threats at home and abroad, focus is further placed on the need to pluck up ‘by the rootes, of these filthie Italian weedes’ which had polluted and ‘deformed’ the state.81 Penry informed parliament of its duties in this respect and declared his anxiety not only because of defects in the services but also because of the damage that corruption and abuse of the church might entail.82 The Queen’s government had an obligation to attend to the spiritual needs of the Welsh people, and Penry proceeded to warn that although that government, despite political and religious upheavals, thrived in the 1580s, unless it repented God might destroy it.83 Corruption permitted by law and supported by parliament, aroused the wrath of God. Could parliament justify its defence of ecclesiastical officialdom, Penry queried, and did it believe that any church government is lawful before God? He dismissed Dr John Bridges, dean of Salisbury’s argument in A Defence of the Government established in the Church of England, a massive work denounced by him as ‘plaine poperie’, which considered ecclesiastical government to be none else but a human constitution which might be lawfully changed and abolished.84 Secular government was ungodly, he declared, when it failed to draw a distinction between that which belonged to the true worship of God (as did ecclesiastical government) and that which appertained to civil policy or affairs.85 Penry resented the subordination of parliament to bishops in Convocation in 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 36

36 Brycheiniog matters regarding religion. Parliament robbed itself of its own prerogative and liberties in this respect. If Convocation, he continued, contained learned and committed ministers its decisions might then be presented to parliament for enactment.86 Hence church governors might be better placed to advise parliament legally. Parliament should be advised by a truthful Convocation, but that Convocation should not be permitted to enact upon its own authority.87 In conclusion John Penry charged parliament to accomplish two things, namely to abolish all that is a breach of God’s ordinance and place godly and learned men in positions to provide for the spiritual needs of the people. The dangers also extended beyond Convocation. While his own Aequity of an Humble Supplication pleaded the cause of Zion [that is, the true Church of God as defined by Penry and his Puritan associates] based on ‘euidence of greatest antiquitye’ contained in that treatise, another work, Y Drych Cristianogawl (1586–7), a long Roman Catholic discourse on the ‘Four Last Things’, ‘printed in an obscure cave in North Wales’, that is Rhiwledyn on the Little Orme near Llandudno, and ‘published by an author unknown’ (now considered to be Robert Gwyn, a prolific recusant author of Penyberth, Llyˆn), was totally rejected by him.88 It was the first Welsh book to be printed in Wales, a work which Penry scornfully described as being based on Robert Parsons’ First Booke of Christian Exercise, Appertayning to Resolution (1582), enlarged as A Christian Directorie (1585), a ‘booke contayning many substantiale errors . . . and other shamful fables’. He feared that the work, of which the prelates had obtained a copy, might lead to serious consequences for the new religious establishment.89 He also dreaded what might be the consequences of invasions by foreign power, particularly Catholic Spain (Philip II), Italy (the Papacy) and the powerful Guise faction in France.90 Penry’s dread that the Roman faith might overrun the realm is a constant reminder of the dangers of external threat in time of war, a matter of some urgency in the Elizabethan period. But for God’s intervention, he declared in the first treatise, the situation might have become critical.91 The Babington Plot (1586) to assassinate Elizabeth and replace her by Mary Queen of Scots had shaken the government, not only because of the dangers associated with a Roman Catholic conspiracy or fierce anti-Hispanism, but also, more immediately, because Mary, who was deeply involved in the plot, was eager to place herself on the English throne, thereby strengthening the alliance with Spain:

Howe likely was it, had not he in mercy choked with their owne raiging spirits, these vnsatiable blood-suckers, Babington, and his adherentes, that we should haue had in this kingdome the hand of the vile, against the honorable, the base against the noble, the indigne against the woorthiest of the land?92

To prevent further calamity the government attempted to discover the causes of such ungodly acts. That was not possible, Penry insisted in his first treatise, so 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 37

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 37 long as parliament allowed non-residencies, pluralities of impropriate livings, ungodly ministers and so on, which would be useless in any attempt to defend the realm against Spain, France and any other of the ‘forces of Rhomish Caine’.93 For its sins, Penry declared in his third treatise, published soon after the Armada, God would pour his wrath upon the kingdom. If God had meant to call the kingdom to reckoning for its ‘great ignorance’ and ‘wicked ecclesiastical constitution’ he would not have saved it from the onslaught of that invasion in the summer of 1588. Parliament, he maintained further, must fear God; the victory over the Armada was God’s warning that he had spared the kingdom on that occasion, but if the Queen in parliament failed to reform religion immediately then he might seek retribution for their sins:

It is not therefore the Spanish furniture and preparations: but the sins within the land, which we are most of all to feare. For although the army of the Spaniard were consumed with the arrowes of famine: although the contagious and deuouring pestilence had eaten them vp by thousands: although their tottering shipps were dispersed, and caried away with the whirlwinde and tempest . . . a navie of winde and weather beaten ships, a refuse of feeble and discomfited men, shalbe sufficiently able to preuaile against this lande; vnlesse another course be taken for God’s glory in Wales by your Hh. [High Court of Parliament] then hitherto hath bene.94

What therefore can be said in conclusion, about John Penry’s role as a Puritan leader of Welsh descent, bearing in mind that there was no Puritan movement in Wales in his time and that he himself was more in contact with the most assiduous Puritan exponents in England? First, during his short career John Penry raised burning issues in his day and age. It was a time when the reformed churches on the continent were in a state of decline. His reform technique was comparable to that applied by his English colleagues like John Field, Sir Anthony Cope and Edward Dunn Lee, who were in close contact with Penry and probably offered him information as to the state of religion in the diocese of St David’s, as well as with Job Throckmorton, Puritan writer and M.P. for Warwickshire. John Whitgift, Archbishop of Canterbury and Penry’s inveterate enemy, had harassed Puritans who constantly felt intimidated and repressed. The Aequity of an Humble Supplication, therefore, as Sir Glanmor Williams states, appears to be ‘part of the elaborate campaign of propaganda and agitation which the Puritan ‘lobby’ prepared for the parliament of that year’ [1587] when the Presbyterians also presented to parliament a programme to establish a Presbyterian system in England and Wales.95 It has been argued further that, despite the attention twentieth-century historians have given to John Penry’s intense patriotism and concern for Wales it appears that his chief aim was promoting the Puritan message and his personal religious convictions. He was essentially part of the Puritan propaganda machine, a fitting 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 38

38 Brycheiniog companion to John Udall, John Field and their associates. Although he was not Martin Marprelate he still remained in close contact with the Puritan press in the midlands of England, and his strong anti-episcopal views coincided with those contained in these satirical tracts.96 For the most part, his observations on Wales could advance the Puritan view of the Church in England generally. What he did was to apply the Puritan message to Wales and to present it with as much spiritual conviction as possible. Concerning the accuracy of his details it appears that, regardless of his lack of evidence in the Welsh dioceses except Bangor, learned ministers in the 1560s were scarce. It was towards the later decades of the century that the church gradually improved with the increase in matriculation and a more fervent attempt by the prelacy to appoint better qualified and more dedicated priests. Since there is no mention at all of Penry in their records it is certain that his treatises had no impact on the improved state of affairs.97 Second, monotonous and repetitious though John Penry’s rhetorical skills were he certainly manipulated them effectively. His involved and complex style and heavily-loaded scriptural comparisons and references, whilst often obscuring the line of thought, did serve to emphasize what he considered to be the fundamental needs of religious life in his native country. Whether or not the establishment merited his denunciation is questionable since he deliberately ignored the more positive contributions of Welsh religious leaders of his day. As stated, he gave no tribute to the translators of the Bible, saw no value in their attempts to reform the Church, regarded the religious establishment in Wales as anti-Christ with no hope of redemption and paid no attention to the role of enlightened clerics and laymen in the production of Protestant literature, meagre though that output was. What he probably did accomplish, however, chiefly through his intensely criticial comments in the first and second treatises, on the inadequacy of the scriptures, was to hasten the publication of the Bible in late 1588. William Morgan, translator of the scriptures, thought highly of John Whitgift and, in his dedication of the Bible, fulsomely praised his patronage. It is not surprising that he was summoned to London in late summer 1587 to attend to the final details of publication. By then Penry’s first treatise had appeared in which he deplored the lack of the complete scriptures in Welsh. When it is considered that the Act for translating the scriptures had been passed almost a quarter of a century earlier was it Whitgift’s intention, it might be asked, to avoid further embarrassments and stem further criticism by steering the complete work through the press as expeditiously as possible? If so, it could then be said that Penry was indirectly responsible for its appearance in September of the following year.98 Thirdly, despite his involvement with the Puritan movement in England and Scotland Penry’s concern for Wales goes without saying, and there is no doubt that he spent much of his time preparing his texts, advocating reform of the Church in his native land. As he did so he became aware of the splendid 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 39

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 39 traditions of the ancient British church which had been forced, according to the Protestant Church Theory, to yield to the corrupt power of Rome in the early Christian centuries.99 He believed that the myth, which expounded that the scriptures (‘that iewell’) existed among the early British people, had given the church its foundation; therefore, the people urgently needed a ‘saving knowledge’ of God by hearing the scriptures read to them in their own language.

It might greeue vs the lesse to be denied the gospel, vnlesse the same were the inheritance which our fore-fathers the Cymbrûbrittons many hundred yeares agoe possessed in this lande. For although at this daie wee cannot cal true religion by the right name, yet are not our superstitious obseruations the blossoms of that auncient truth our forefathers professed and sealed with their blood. But the impes [children of the devil or of hell] of that lifelesse and brutish stock of Rome, planted in England by Augustine that proud friar, whose tyranical proceedings our diuines in Wales resisted euen to the losse of their liues . . . The equitie then of our petition appeareth also in that we aske nothing but the possession and inheritaunce of our fathers to be restored vnto vs, which they coulde not alienate from their children. This were a fitte place to stir vp my deare countrimen to bee earnest in obteining that iewell which is worth all their riches besides, beeing their owne right . . .100 It is true that the content of his treatises and letters was not entirely new because he focused on abuses which had hitherto been included in the reports of a variety of churchmen, and agreed that the reform of gross abuses was urgently needed. In that sense what Penry had to say, particularly in his first treatise, concentrated on the source of the Church’s weakness, namely its crippling poverty, a church sadly affected by impropriations, non-residence, clerical ignorance and widespread illiteracy, and to that extent, he made a lasting contribution to the historian’s knowledge and understanding of the late Tudor church in Wales.101 His concern for Wales is abundantly revealed in a desperate appeal to Lord Burghley on the eve of his execution:

I am a poore young man borne and bredd in the mountaynes of Walles: I am the first since the last springing vpp of the Gospell in this latter age that publickly laboured to haue the blessed seed therof sowen in these barrayn mountaynes…In the earnest desire I had to se the Gospel planted in my natiue country, and the contrary corruptions removed, I . . . forget mine own danger . . . I leaue the successe of these my labours vnto such of my Countryemen, as the Lord is to rayse vp after mee for the accomplishing of that worke, wch in the calling of my contrey vnto the knowledge of Christs blessed Gospell, I beganne.102

Finally, John Penry made no contribution to the growth of Puritanism in Wales of his own generation. His career was too short, and he spent too little time in his native land. What he did accomplish was done in conjunction with other Puritan leaders and friends of his in the midlands and London. Some believe that he 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 40

40 Brycheiniog spent time preaching in Wales during the short period 1584–5 and that he founded Troedrhiwdalar church in the parish of Llanafanfawr. He may have preached there, but certainly did not establish a cause there. In fact, he left no sect to perpetuate his name.103 Regardless of his shortcomings, however, in his own day this irascible character stood among a small but devoted band of Separatist leaders, who desired to establish their brand of God’s Church on earth. Whether John Penry can be regarded as a martyr to the cause or not is debatable; his firm stance in the Exhortation reveals a person whose career and testimony are proudly recorded in the annals of nonconformity:

I know not my daunger in writing these things. I see you my dere & natiue countrimen perish. It pitieth me. I come with the rope about my necke to saue you, howsoeuer it goeth with me; I labour that you may haue the Gospel preached among you, though it cost mee my life: I thinke it well bestowed.104 What does this emotionally charged confession tell us about Penry? A heroic and courageous Puritan apologist? Yes. An ardent Welsh patriot? Certainly. A religiously sincere and humble person? Yes. A pioneer? Yes, but not in the sense that he nurtured an influential following or established a sect. And what of him as a martyr? Judging by his statement in the Exhortation, yes, if that term is defined as the act of undergoing death or suffering for any great cause. He was described on the title-page of his work The Historie of Corah, Dathan, and Abiram, which was published posthumously in 1609, as ‘a Martyr of Jesus Christ’, and doubtless that can be justified. At best he is an enigma; there was something perverse and willfully arrogant and headstrong about him, and yet, deep down there was a sincerity and honesty that cannot be gainsaid. He falsely prided himself on being the first ‘that laboured to have the blessed seed’ sown in the barren mountains of Wales, without any word of recognition for William Salesbury, Richard Davies, William Morgan, his co-Breconian Sir John Price and others who contributed far more significantly than he to the advancement of the Reformation in Wales. Other leaders who were actively engaged in Wales in later generations, Dr Thomas Rees stated, achieved far more in attaining, what he called, the ‘secession of persecution and the triumph of religious liberty’.105 Nevertheless, this noble firebrand of Brecknockshire, although largely ignored and misrepresented for almost three centuries, did assume an admirable role as a promoter of Puritan ideology in the latter decades of the Elizabethan age.

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John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 41 NOTES

This article is the substance of the Sir John Lloyd Memorial Lecture delivered to the Brecknock Society at the Guildhall, Brecon on 14 March 2005. I wish to thank Brian Ll. James and Delwyn Tibbott for reading an earlier draft and for their useful comments. 1 Rees, T. History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales, from its Rise to the Present Time (1861), pp. 19, 30. 2 Collinson, P. The Elizabethan Puritan Movement (1967), pp. 311, 391; McGinn, D. J. John Penry and the Marprelate Controversy (1966); Williams, Glanmor, ‘John Penry: Marprelate and patriot?’, Welsh History Review, Vol. 3 Part 4 (1967), pp. 372–80. Several studies of John Penry have appeared in Welsh and English, such as Jones, R. Tudur ‘Mantoli cyfraniad John Penri’, Y Cofiadur, Vol. 58, Mai 1993, pp. 4–41; idem, ‘John Penri, 1563–1593’, in Jenkins, G. H. (ed.), Cof Cenedl: Ysgrifau ar Hanes Cymru, Vol. 8 (1993), pp. 39–68; Williams, D. ‘The enigma of John Penry’, The Welsh Review (March 1945), pp. 50–4; Williams, Glanmor ‘John Penry a Phiwritaniaeth gynnar’, in Cymru a’r Gorffennol: Côr o Leisiau (2000), pp. 163–78; Jones, J. G., ‘John Penry: government, order and the “perishing souls” of Wales’, Transactions of the Honourable Society of Cymmrodorion, 1993, pp. 47–81. 3 Edwards, O. M. Cartrefi Cymru (1934), pp. 100–15; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (2004), Vol. 43, pp. 617–9; Pierce, W. John Penry: His Life Times and Writings (1923). 4 Williams, ‘Marprelate and patriot’, pp.378-80. 5 Penry, J. Three Treatises Concerning Wales, ed. D. Williams (1960), pp. 11–12. 6 For Bale and Cartwright see Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 3, pp. 482–6; Vol. 10, pp. 409–13. 7 Owen, G. The Description of Penbrokshire, ed. H. Owen, Vol. 3 (1906), 98–9. See also p. 99 n.2. 8 Powell, V. Common-Prayer-Book. No Divine Service (1660), pp. 5, 15. 9 Williams, ‘Marprelate and patriot’, pp. 372–80. 10 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, tt.27–8; Jones, N. L. Faith by Statute: Parliament and the Settlement of Religion 1559 (1982), pp. 89–103, 117–20, 129–30, 134–7, 140–4; Doran, S. Elizabeth I and Religion 1558–1603 (1994), pp. 14–22. 11 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, ix-x, xxvi; Pierce, John Penry, pp. 3–7; Peel, A. (ed.), The Notebook of John Penry 1593, Camden 3rd Series, Vol. 67 (1944), ix–x; Llywelyn-Williams, A. Crwydro Brycheiniog (1964), pp. 157–8; Jones, S. R. ‘The houses of Breconshire’, Brycheiniog, Vol. 9 (1963), pp. 31–2; Jones, E. P. ‘Cartrefi enwogion sir Frycheiniog’, Brycheiniog, 13 (1968–9), pp. 134–5. It is interesting to note that Theophilus Jones, the Brecknockshire historian, while acknowledging the existence of the Penry family, does not mention Penry himself. For Elystan Glodrydd (‘ruler of Rhwng Gwy a Hafren’) see Siddons, M. P. The Development of Welsh Heraldry (1991), Vol. 1, pp. 36–7, 198; Yorke, P. The Royal Tribes of Wales (1799), t. 132 (but does not mention the Penry family). R. G. Gruffydd states that Penry was a Glamorgan and not a Brecknockshire man, but gives no evidence to substantiate it. Gruffydd, R. G. ‘In that Gentile Country . . .’: The beginnings of Puritan Nonconformity in Wales (1975), p. 6. 12 Jones, Theophilus A History of the County of Brecknock, Vol. 1 (1909), p.116. 13 Venn, J. and J. A. Alumni Cantabrigienses: A Bibliographical List of all Known Students, Graduates and Holders of office . . . to 1901 (1912), Vol. 1, p. 342. 14 Rees, History of Protestant Nonconformity, pp. 27–8; Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 111; Pierce, John Penry, pp. 419, 492. In a fragment of a letter to his wife he stated that his mother and brothers would ‘lay up something for a store for our poor children against they come of age, if they will giue you nothing in the mean time. I will write unto them, if I can by any means for this purpose.’ Pierce, p. 409. 15 Knappen, M. M. Tudor Puritanism (1939), pp. 218–19, 223–5, 293–4; Williams, Glanmor, ‘William Morgan and the Cambridge connection’, Welsh History Review, Vol. 14 Part 3 (1989), pp. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 42

42 Brycheiniog

366–7. The fullest account of Cambridge Puritanism is found in Porter, H. C. Reformation and Reaction in Tudor Cambridge (1958). 16 ‘An Almond for a Parrat’, in McKerrow, R. B. (ed.), The Works of Thomas Nashe, Vol. 3 (1905), p. 366. 17 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, pp. 12–44; Pierce, John Penry, pp. 154–72. 18 Wood, A. Athenae Oxonienses, ed. P. Bliss, Vol. 1 (1813), pp. 591–8. 19 Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 54, pp. 690–2. 20 Hasler, P. W. (ed.), The History of Parliament: The House of Commons 1558–1603, Vol 2 (1981), p. 48. Dunn Lee resided at Abercynfor, Llandyfaelog, Carmarthenshire, and was Member of Parliament for Carmarthen boroughs in 1584 and 1586. His mother was a co-heiress of Sir Thomas Jones of Abermarlais, and his grandmother on his mother’s side was an heiress of Sir Edward Dwnn, sheriff of Carmarthenshire (1587–8, 1593–4). Dwnn, L. Heraldic Visitations of Wales and Part of the Marches, ed. Meyrick, S. R. (1846), Vol. 1, pp. 20–199. 21 Sheils, W. J. The Puritans in the Diocese of Peterborough, 1558–1610, [Northamptonshire Record Society, no. 30] (1979), pp. 51–4, 97–8. 22 Johnson was expelled from his Fellowship at Christ’s College, Cambridge, in 1589 and imprisoned because of his Puritan tendencies, but in 1592 became pastor of John Greenwood’s church. Knappen, Tudor Puritanism, pp. 313–16; Pierce, John Penry, pp. 356–60. 23 Statutes of the Realm, IV (Part.1), 1547–1585 (1963 ed.), pp. 355–8, 659–63; Burrage, Champlin, John Penry: The So-called Martyr of Congregationalism as Revealed in the Original Record of his Trial and in Documents related thereto (1913), which contains, among other transcripts, the original text of Penry’s trial and his defence against his first indictment, pp. 17–25, 35–41. 24 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1547–1580, Vol. LXVI, no. 26 (i), p. 362 (25 January 1570); ibid., 1581–1590, Vol. CLXII, no. 29 , p. 119 (16 September 1583); Williams, B. The Welsh Clergy, 1558–1642 (1998), Vol 1, p. 47. 25 Bradney, J. A. ‘The speech of William Blethin, bishop of Llandaff, and the customs and ordinances of the church of Llandaff’, Y Cymmrodor, Vol. 31 (1921), pp. 240–64. 26 Ellis, H. (ed.), Original Letters Illustrative of English History, Vol. 3 2nd Series (1827), pp. 47–8. 27 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1581–90, Vol. CXCI, no. 17, p. 339; Williams, Glanmor Bywyd ac Amserau’r Esgob Richard Davies (1953), p. 56 (note 2). 28 Thomas, D. R. ‘A discoverie of the present estate of the Byshoppricke of St Asaphe’, Archaeologia Cambrensis, Vol. I 5th Series (1884), pp. 53–8; Jones, J. G. ‘The Reformation bishops of St Asaph’, Journal of Welsh Ecclesiastical History, Vol. 7, 1990, pp. 21–2; idem, ‘Thomas Davies and William Hughes: two Reformation bishops of St Asaph’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, Vol. 29 Part 2 (1981), pp. 325–7. 29 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1581–90, Vol. CXCI, no. 17, p. 339. 30 Williams, Glanmor ‘Landlords in Wales: The Church’, in Thirsk, J., (ed.), The Agrarian History of England and Wales, Vol. 4, 1500–1640 (1967), pp. 387–95. 31 Calendar of the State Papers Domestic, 1547–1580, Vol. LXVI, no. 26 (i), p.362 (25 January 1570); Williams, Glanmor Wales and the Reformation (1997), pp. 290, 297–9. See also Thomas, D. R. The Life and Work of Bishop Davies & William Salesbury (1892), pp. 37–44. 32 Thomas, Life and Work of Bishop Davies and Salesbury, p. 38. 33 Original Letters Illustrative of English History, Vol 3, p. 44. 34 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, pp. 7, 32. 35 Seaborne, M. V. J. The Reformation in Wales (1952), tt. 25–7; Williams, Glanmor Wales and the Reformation, Chap. 11, pp. 280–311. 36 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1547–80, Vol. XLIV, no. 27, p. 301; Mathew, D. ‘Some Elizabethan documents’, Bulletin of the Board of Celtic Studies, Vol. 6 (1931), p. 78. 37 Calendar of State Papers Domestic, 1581–90, Vol. CLXV, no. 3, p. 143. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 43

John Penry: The Early Brecknockshire Puritan Firebrand 43

38 Hughes, G. H. (ed.), Rhagymadroddion 1547–1659 (1951), p. 101. 39 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 18. 40 Hughes, Rhagymadroddion, pp. 3–4. See also Williams, Glanmor ‘Sir John Pryse of Brecon’, Brycheiniog, Vol. 31 (1998–9), pp. 49–63. 41 Williams, Wales and the Reformation, pp. 305–6; Jones, J. G. Aspects of Religious Life in Wales c.1536–1660: Leadership, Opinion and the Local Community (2004), pp. 61–2. 42 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, pp. 11–12. 43 Williams, ‘Marprelate and patriot?’, pp. 374–5; Collinson, Elizabethan Puritan Movement, pp. 273–8, 303–16; Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 36. 44 British Library, Harleian MS. 7188 fo. 93b; Neale, J. E. Elizabeth I and her Parliaments, 1584–1601 (1957), p. 153. 45 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 36. 46 Ibid. 47 Ibid., p. 37. 48 Ibid., p. 38. 49 Ibid., p. 38. 50 Ibid. 51 Ibid., p. 40. 52 Ibid. 53 Ibid., p. 38. 54 Ibid. 55 Ibid., p. 39. 56 Ibid. 57 Ibid., p. 40. 58 Ibid., pp. 40–1. 59 Ibid., p. 41. 60 Ibid., pp. 41–2; Pierce, John Penry, pp. 180–2. 61 J. E., Lloyd and Jenkins, R. T. (eds.), Dictionary of Welsh Biography down to 1940 (1959), pp. 350–1. 62 Pierce, John Penry, pp. 180–1. 63 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 60. 64 Ibid., p. 61. 65 Ibid., pp.60–1. 66 Ibid., p. 62. 67 Ibid., pp. 56. 68 Ibid., p. 61. 69 Ibid., pp. 61–5; McGinn, John Penry and the Marprelate Controversy, pp. 118–32; Pierce, W., An Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts (1908), pp. 28–62. 70 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 65. 71 Ibid., p. 66. 72 Ibid., pp. 69–72. 73 Ibid. 74 Ibid., pp. 69–70, 83–4. 75 Ibid., pp. 89–98; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 51, pp. 556–60. 76 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 97. 77 Ibid., pp. 69–70. 78 Ibid., pp. 69–70, 83–4. 79 Bicknell, E. J. A Theological Introduction to the Thirty-Nine Articles of the Church of England, ed. H. J. Carpenter (1955 ed.), pp. 352–3. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 44

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80 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 111. 81 Ibid. 82 Ibid., pp. 112–13. 83 Ibid., p. 114. 84 Ibid., p. 123; Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, Vol. 7, pp. 583–5. 85 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, pp. 124–6. 86 Ibid., pp. 145–6. 87 Ibid. 88 Ibid., p. 157. 89 Ibid., pp. 157–8. See Gruffydd, R. G. ‘Gwasg ddirgel yr ogof yn Rhiwledyn’, Journal of the Welsh Bibliographical Society, Vol. 14 (July 1958), pp. 1–23 (esp. pp.12–19); idem, (ed.), A Guide to Welsh Literature, Vol. 3 c.1550–1700, pp. 208–9; idem, Argraffwyr Cyntaf Cymru: Gwasgau Dirgel y Catholigion adeg Elisabeth (1972), pp. 8–11. 90 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 159. 91 Ibid., p. 27. 92 Ibid. 93 Ibid. 94 Ibid., pp. 162–3. 95 ‘Marprelate and patriot’, p. 374. 96 Pierce, An Historical Introduction to the Marprelate Tracts, pp. 284–308; Rees, History of Protestant Nonconformity, pp. 24–5; Peel, Notebook of John Penry, xvi–xvii. 97 Griffith, W. P. Learning, Law and Religion: Higher Education and Welsh Society c.1540–1640 (1996), Chap. 6, pp. 278–326, esp. pp. 315–19. 98 Williams, Glanmor ‘Bishop William Morgan and the First Welsh Bible’, in The Welsh and their Religion (1991), pp. 207–9. 99 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 30. See Lewis, Saunders ‘Y Ddamcaniaeth Eglwysig Brotestannaidd’, in Gruffydd, R. G. (ed.), Meistri’r Canrifoedd: Ysgrifau ar Hanes Llenyddiaeth Gymraeg gan Saunders Lewis (1973), pp. 116-39; Williams, Glanmor ‘Some Protestant views of early British church history’, in Welsh Reformation Essays (1967), pp. 207–19; idem, ‘Cipdrem arall ar y Ddamcaniaeth Eglwysig Brotestannaidd’, Y Traethodydd, Series 3, Vol. 17 (April 1948), pp. 49–57. 100 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 30. 101 Williams, Glanmor ‘Landlords in Wales: The Church’, in Agrarian History of England and Wales, pp. 381–3, 387–92. 102 Pierce, John Penry, vi, p. 457. 103 Jones, R. Tudur, Congregationalism in Wales (2004), ed. R. Pope, p. 298; Rees, T. and Thomas, J. Hanes Eglwysi Annibynol Cymru (1871–90), Vol. 4, p. 373. It is believed that a dissenting church was established there between 1646 and 1660 and it is known that Walter Cradock and Vavasor Powell preached there before 1642. 104 Three Treatises Concerning Wales, p. 77; Davies, P. ‘Episodes in the history of Brecknockshire dissent’, Brycheiniog, Vol. 3 (1957), p. 13. 105 Rees, History of Protestant Nonconformity, p. 30. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 45

THE PERSONAL LIFE AND PRIVATE TRADE OF CAPTAIN JOHN LLOYD

PREFACE During the last three hundred years a very great number of books have been written about the ships, the cargoes, the voyages, the owners and the crews of the maritime service of the English East India Company. Consequently there is copious information regarding the life of ships’ captains when they were at sea but little is known about how these men lived when they were on land. This article attempts to provide some insight into the personality, non-maritime life, social relations and business activities of John Lloyd of Breconshire, who was one of the few Welshmen to achieve the coveted position of Captain of an Indiaman. In 2003 over a hundred letters and documents written by, to or concerning John Lloyd were found at Abercynrig. These were briefly described in Volume XXXV of Brycheiniog.1 They contribute new information about John Lloyd’s domestic life, the acquisition of his fortune, his business interests, his property and his tenants in Llanwrtyd. In addition, the letters provide limited insight into Lloyd’s relationship with his immediate social circle in Brecon, a few of whom, are mentioned briefly in Theophilus Jones’s History of Breconshire, and in particular with his friend and solicitor Walter Powell. Moreover, included in the letters are snippets of social information on topics ranging from the perceived virtues of the pianoforte compared with the harpsichord, the use of laudanum for medicinal purposes and the detailed negotiations regarding renting a substantial townhouse in Brecon, during which one of the issues was the contribution the landlord should make to the cost of the new wallpaper! Therefore, it was decided that before writing an account of the life of Captain Lloyd from the time he returned to Breconshire in 1796 until his death in 1818 it was worthwhile attempting to use these letters and documents to obtain a broader understanding of the character of John Lloyd as well as appreciating the fine line between his financial success and ruin. The one hundred and five letters and documents for the period 1788–1818 were originally found in 1910 by John Lloyd the Radical (1833–1913), the grandson of Captain Lloyd. They were discovered behind the stables of the offices of the solicitors Jeffreys and Powell in 12 Castle Street, Brecon who had just moved into the building, which had been occupied, by the solicitors Walter and John Powell in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. In 1941 Sir John Lloyd, the principal founder of the Brecknock Society and the Brecknock Museum, rediscovered the letters when the Lloyds had to vacate Dinas House, which had been requisitioned by the army, and move to what had at one time been the Abercynrig granary. Sir John examined the letters and made brief notes 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 46

46 Brycheiniog about their content with the intention of writing a history of his ancestor. After his death in 1954 the letters were again mislaid for fifty years until Richard Lloyd, the great-great-great grandson of Captain Lloyd unearthed them, when Abercynrig was being restored in 2003.

THE LETTERS AND DOCUMENTS2 It is not possible to classify rigidly the letters under specific headings because one letter usually deals with several different business issues and may also contain a wide variety of comments and information on more personal matters. Therefore, the letters and documents are presented in clusters, which consider one broad subject, in the chronological order they were written. This article concentrates on the fifty letters and documents written between February 1788 and January 1796 when Lloyd retired from the maritime service of the East India Company. Of these twenty-eight were letters from John Lloyd to Walter Powell, three from Elizabeth Lloyd to Walter Powell and two copies of letters from Walter Powell to John Lloyd. The tone of the letters from Lloyd to Powell is informal but only two of them are addressed to, ‘Dear Walter’ as opposed to, ‘Dear Sir’. However, by September 1790 the ending of the letters changed from, ‘Yours Truly’ or ‘Yours Sincerely’, to such expressions as, ‘God Bless you, I am, Yours Truly’, and ‘I am Dear Walter, yours most sincerely’. The article concludes with the analysis of documents regarding Captain Lloyd’s private trade to and from India in 1791–2.

FRIENDS AND RELATIONS

The Powells After their marriage on 8 November 1787 Elizabeth Lloyd, who was then thirty- four and the only daughter of the late Roger Williams, a prosperous Brecon mercer, accompanied her husband, who was First Mate [Officer] of the Manship, to London. This would probably have been the first time for Elizabeth Lloyd to leave her family and friends in Brecon and she remained at 7 Berner[s] Street, London, until the end of March. From the time the Lloyds left Brecon until Elizabeth returned to Brecon, Lloyd’s duties regarding preparing the ship for sea would have meant him staying on board not only in the day, but on most nights, before an anticipated separation of at least eighteen months. Most of the letters during the next five years indicate how much importance the Lloyds attached to their connections in Brecon, especially with the Powell family. The first letter from Lloyd in London to Walter Powell is dated 4 February 1788 and in it he informed Powell that, ‘From this time I must beg 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 47

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 47 you to consult Mrs Lloyd as I shall have no time to attend to particulars and will be perfectly satisfied with whatever you do knowing that it will be particularly intended for my interest’. He then adds what appears to be an apology for a slight breach of social etiquette by his wife of three months, ‘Many thanks for your kind hints as to Mrs Hay [a kinswoman of Elizabeth Lloyd] and Price, Mrs Ll[oyd] has surtainly neglected them, at the same time [I] am sure it was not meant and I think they should make a very large allowance for her anxiety and parting with me for so long a time please to make our excuses in such a manner you may and that we hope to be forgiven . . . Mrs Ll will return to Brecon ab[ou]t the latter end of this month.’ On the 29th February, Lloyd informed Powell that, ‘. . . at present her intentions are to return to Ship Street [to a house owned by the Lloyds] for a few months.’ There then follows a postscript, ‘E Lloyd best love to Mrs Powell thinks herself obliged for the many favors rec[eive]d. Mrs Lloyd will think herself Happy to execute any commission Mrs Powell will trust her with while she remains in Town – should you favour her with a line direct to 7 Berner[s] Street off Oxford Road.’3 The next letter to Walter Powell was written over a year later on 2 May 1789 by Elizabeth Lloyd from Berner[s] Street where she was waiting, ‘the return of Mr Lloyd, whom I expect during the course of this month as the Manship is expected between this and the 20th Inst. . . . My best Love and respects to Mrs Powell with compliments to Mr J Powell pray tell Mrs Powell that she will receive a letter from me next Saturday having sent it in a Box to Mrs Hay.’4 Elizabeth Lloyd’s next letter of 21 May, after dealing with certain business matters, once again emphasises, ‘. . . my best respects & Love to Mrs Powell pray tell her I am happy she approved of the plates and that every post I expect a line from her. Shall be obliged to you to let my Mother know that I am well with my Duty. I am D[ea]r Sir, Your Obliged H[um]ble Serv[an]t. E Lloyd.’5 These letters make it clear that with the assistance of Walter Powell she had competently managed her own financial affairs and those of her husband during his absence. On 21 June 1789 the Manship anchored in the Thames and the EIC Inspectors ‘cleared’ the ship on 14 July. Six days later Lloyd wrote to Walter Powell, ‘I have from Day to Day expected a Line from my good friends Messers W’r [Walter] & John Powell, but being disappointed makes me take up the pen to let them know that their Old Acquaintance is in being and in perfect health, this w[oul]d have been done sooner had not the duty of the Ship required all my attention. Mrs Lloyd has often repeated to me the friendly reception of Mrs Powell and with pleasure I return to you Her most sincere thanks – I return it as the greatest obligation you could possibly confer upon me. . . . The Manship does not sail this year therefore [I] shall have plenty of time to Visit Wales. I beg my best respects to Mrs Powell and all the family, Mrs Lloyd most heartily joins me . . . Now we 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 48

48 Brycheiniog have begun pray let me have your frequent and friendly Correspondence, my Unfeighn’d good Wishes attend you.’6 However, a subsequent letter makes it clear that the Lloyds were still in London at the end of August and, for reasons connected with Lloyd’s aspiration to become Captain of the Manship, they possibly remained there for several months before returning to Brecon which they then left early in January. On 5 January 1790 Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘. . . we have taken a small snug house at Stockwell where we expect to stay while in this part of the world and a Brother Officer remains with us till the first of April next, then goes to sea and leaves us in possession of furniture etc all in their places – I am sure Mrs Powell will like our situation, only three miles out of London stage coaches every Hour for one shilling. [£4 in 2005 value]’ He then makes the first of many offers to undertake for the Powells any services on their behalf in London, ‘Let me know your commands and all little jobs in this part, being quite an Idler.’ and in return, ‘Mrs Lloyd requests that Mrs Powell will be so obliging as to send the Butter directed to be left at No 26 Lombard Street by Golding’s Wagon – Mrs Lloyd wishes to hear from Mrs P soon.’7 During the remainder of 1790 Lloyd wrote eleven times to Walter Powell. From these letters it can be concluded that Powell replied to each one but only a copy made by Powell of the one written on 1 April survives. In addition to discussing matters largely concerned with Lloyd’s next voyage these letters either deal with issues regarding his property in Llanwrtyd and Brecon or are typical of exchanges between two friends. On 11 February, ‘Pray accept our best thanks for your handsome present (the side of mutton) it was very good indeed. I carried the watches to Mr Jackson and gave him your instructions at the same time, they will be ready in ab[ou]t fifteen days – We are all well, Mrs Lloyd desires her best respects to Mrs Powell and that the salt butter was most excellent – don’t think your little commissions any trouble to me for I have pleasure in getting them executed. Mrs Lloyd is disappointed in the expected pleasure of seeing Mrs Powell in London this summer, be assured that we should do all in our powers to render her excursion agreeable, possibly there may be some hopes yet. . . . pray let all friends that we are well, particularly Mrs Williams and our friends in Wheat Street.’8 (Wheat Street was in second half of the eighteenth century one of the significant residential streets in Brecon.) Two months later, ‘Mrs Lloyd desires her best respect to Mrs Powell and that she will be very particular in getting the China as handsome as possible at the price – Mrs Ll does not wish to part with those in Brecon. The Watchmaker was to have wrote me a line when they were finished, have not heard from him but will call in a day or two and send them down with the China – in your next send me the Watchmaker’s address, for I think I have mislaid it – and in future please to direct for me at the Jerusalem Coffee House – mention the same to Mr 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 49

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 49 Williams.’9 Powell replied quickly, presumably with the missing address, and on15 April Lloyd was able to write, ‘Mrs Rees Lloyd [wife of the third brother of John Lloyd who was enlisted on the Manship and then ‘ran’ in Calcutta almost certainly with the knowledge of the Captain] leaves Town on Sunday, by her you will receive the Watches (two shillings saved), the China is bought and will be sent by North’s Wagon [a Brecon firm of carriers based in what later became known as Fryer’s Yard] on Saturday; I was obliged to wrangle very hard to get them for £3-10-0 and a white lie in the Bargain, viz. that they were for an old aunt of mine in the Country. . . . Mrs Lloyd desires her best respects to Mrs Powell and begs to know whether she intends an excursion to the Metropolis this Summer or not – All that we have to say is, that we will do all in our power to make the trip pleasant – my Compliments to all at your fireside . . . Please to call in at Wheat Street and let them know we are well.’10 Six weeks later: ‘Mrs Lloyd joins me in our very best respects to Mrs Powell, tell her that we long to see her here, happy would we be of your party to Llanwrtid or indeed anywhere else.’11 One of the letters establishes that the journey by stagecoach from Brecon to London could, in adverse circumstances, take five, as opposed to the usual three days, so if the Lloyds stayed in Brecon for a week it might mean his being away from his responsibilities for over a fortnight.12 On 27 August 1790 Lloyd wrote to Powell after a short visit to Brecon, ‘. . . we got safe to Town on Tuesday morning after a long passage of 5 days all Well – On my arrival found a D...l of a noise and many questions why I kept away so long. . . . Mrs Lloyd wishes for a small tub of butter as soon as you can meet with such as may be good, and will keep. Pray let us hear from you now and then, with or without Business.’13 However, they made another short visit in October to make arrangements for Mrs Lloyd, who by then was pregnant, to live in Brecon when the Manship sailed for India in 1791. ‘We arrived in Town on Tuesday evening ab[ou]t 8 o’c[loc]k, all Well – Mrs Lloyd seems more reconciled to my going than when I left Brecon – Of course you will give her all the necessary assistance in my absence.’ Perhaps because of the emotional tension resulting from the forthcoming separation Lloyd omitted to carry out the expected social formalities before his departure, ‘Make our respects to all around you and particularly Mrs Powell with an excuse for my not seeing her before I left Brecon, I forgot in my hurry and Confusion, I intended it as my last place of call . . . Pray call in Wheat Street and say we are well. Tomorrow we shall go into Lodgings.’14 Either during Lloyd’s last visit to Brecon or in a subsequent letter, Powell must have asked him to enquire about the price and availability of second-hand harpsichords. Presumably after some research Lloyd wrote to Powell in December, ‘I have seen several Harpsichords Second-hand price from 16 to 30 guineas, I find that these Instruments are much out of fashion, and in my opinion very awkward things; therefore w[oul]d recommend a pianoforte. The price of 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 50

50 Brycheiniog the best plain ones from 26–28 Guineas, patent ones I mean, they are a handsome piece of Furniture and will answer very well for a sideboard with having a Leather cover to fit – When you are determined I think Longman & Co the best Ho[use] as they will most decidedly do you Justice – whether by letter or person – They have very handsome secondhand ones (pianofortes) at 20 Guineas and should you disapprove or wish to change for any other, they will do it within the Course of a year.’15 Lloyd’s advice was very sound since Longman & Broderip of 26, Cheapside, the most fashionable shopping street in London, were the leading and largest manufacturers of pianos in Europe. However, it is not known whether Powell bought the piano recommended.

Plate 1 Square piano c 1796 manufactured by Longman and Broderip. Reproduced by permission of Andrew Lancaster, Music Room Antiques, [email protected]

Powell did however accept the help of Lloyd to purchase in London a medicine for an unidentified illness, ‘The price of the Decoction [a liquor produced by boiling down Cinchona bark from South America] at Bulkley’s is £3 [£240]16 but they inform me that it will not keep longer than a Week therefore can’t be sent from London with propriety – they have promised me direction how to make at pleasure, should you think proper to order the Bark at their Ho[use] let me know in your next and I will see it Sent.’17 Powell decided to have the medicine and not the Cinchona bark sent to him and it was dispatched on 4 February 1791. Unfortunately the cure proved to have unpleasant side effects and two months later Lloyd wrote, ‘The following remedy against this 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 51

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 51 terrible effect was given by the surgeon of the Manship – when I pass Temple Bar will call at Bulkley and send you what they say – I think you may rely on what Scott [the surgeon] has said. 20–33 drops of laudanum [an opium based painkiller] is taken in 24 hours. It will in general prevent the effect of the Bark – less may be tried and increased if necessary.’18 The impression gained from the letters is that while the Lloyds were close to the Powells and Elizabeth Lloyd’s family, John Lloyd had few close friends in Brecon. In April 1791 he wrote to Powell, ‘Pray call in Wheat Street and make my best respects – the same to All you may esteem my real disinterested friends – this will not require a long Walk.’19 Mrs Powell was regularly invited but never accepted the invitation to visit the Lloyds in London. It is noticeable that there is never in the correspondence any reference to the many entertainments in London, which might have enticed Mrs Powell to accept their invitation. In addition to the theatres, where Sarah Siddons was to be seen, and the concert halls, the Lloyd’s house in Stockwell was less than a mile from the famous Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens where after 1792 the entrance ticket was two shillings. During the second half of the eighteenth century the twelve acres of Vauxhall Gardens were patronised by people from all socio-economic classes, especially from the ‘middling sort’, of whom the Lloyds and the Powells would have been examples. This suggests that the social life of the Lloyds in London was somewhat constrained. Occasionally a lighthearted note is struck in the correspondence such as Lloyd commenting on 2 March 1791, ‘Yesterday [St. David’s Day] got quite tipsy at the Crown and Anchor drinking Taffy’s health.’21 and after returning to London in November 1792 on completion of his first voyage as captain, ‘Mrs Lloyd joins me in sincere respects to all your good family and in particular Mrs Walter Powell and Mary Ann Jones. Tell them I must have a kiss apiece the moment I arrive in Brecon. . . . the Little Baggage [the Lloyd’s daughter Elizabeth had been born in September 1791. She died during his next voyage] is very well but backward with her tongue – suppose she will make up for it bye and bye.’22 The following day he thanked Walter Powell for the, ‘. . . very fine Ham and a Goose . . . I have received Mr John Powell’s present thanks to him let all Wheat Street know that we wish them the compliments of this Season . . . Mrs Lloyd joins me in most Sincere Respects to Mrs Powell and Miss Jones – tell the ladies I must have a hearty kiss when I arrive.’23

Tom Lloyd The letters refer twenty-seven times to relations of Elizabeth Lloyd (née Williams) and ten times to John Lloyd’s relations. John Lloyd arranged for Tom, his second brother, to sail on the Manship to India and, like his brother David before him, left ‘sick’ in Calcutta in December 1788 where he was apparently almost immediately successful in finding 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 52

52 Brycheiniog employment. In May 1789 Elizabeth Lloyd was able to report to Walter Powell, ‘Tom Lloyd is settled in partnership in one of the first Houses in Bengal there is one of the partners now coming home with an acquired fortune in six years of £10 thousand [£840,000] I find Tom Lloyd is much approved of as a Man of Business.’24 Eighteen months later in January 1791 John Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘I have receiv’d only one letter from my Brother Thomas by which I find he is well and that his partner Mr Brampton is dead – he complains of hard work in office and much business – hope it will ensure his purpose.’25 Eventually in 1796 he was accepted as a Writer in the East India Company and was eventually promoted to Factor. The 1803 List of East India Company Civil Servants records Thomas Lloyd as ‘at home’ and he does not appear to have returned to India. According to D. L. Wooding, the highly regarded nineteenth century local historian in northwest Breconshire, Thomas became a solicitor when he returned to Wales and died without issue.26

Uncle Jones The only other member of John Lloyd’s family to get more than a passing reference was his ‘Uncle Jones’ who in June 1790 considered renting one of his nephew’s properties in Brecon. Powell must have written something to Lloyd about his uncle because in October Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘I am glad to think I stand so fair at Newport [where Uncle Jones lived]; I intend to keep the Old Gent in mind by visit on my way down; God knows I can but very ill spare the time just now, it will be worse bye and bye.’27 This friendly relationship between John and his uncle came to an acrimonious end. In November 1792 Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘Unkle David Jones . . . accused me of having made away with and inspecting his papers without leave – his accusation is serious and made in the most pointed terms . . . I am very much hurt that he should think me capable of any dishonourable action – I know nothing of his papers or ever saw them.’28 No more is heard about ‘Unkle Jones’!

Howell Williams and the Chaberts There are occasional mentions in the letters to Elizabeth Lloyd’s mother and brother William who performed various minor services for John Lloyd. Far more important are the eleven references to Howell Williams who was the son of Mrs Margaret Williams of Penisharwayn, Felinfach, about three miles from Brecon, and apparently related to Elizabeth Lloyd’s mother. Williams is mentioned in the first paragraph of the first in the series of letters written by Lloyd in February 1788, ‘. . . he [HW] set off this morning for Ostend preparatory to his intended 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 53

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 53 Voyage to the East. I have no doubt that he will do well – sh[oul]’d he may have a fair opening to business – I am much concerned at not being able to take him on the Manship.’29 Just over a year later Elizabeth Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘. . . in regard Mr H Williams I am fearful there is no chance of his coming home in the Manship as Sir Archibald Campbell [Governor and Commander-in-Chief of the Madras Presidency] and family have taken the whole of Her [that is occupied all the passenger accommodation] and when Mr Lloyd wrote & his letter was dated the 6th of Nov he at that time had not seen or heard anything of Mr Williams but I hope & trust on Mrs Chabbert’s account that they will have met before Mr Lloyd left Calcutta which was to be on the 20th of Jan[uar]’y.’30 After Lloyd returned to London he wrote to Powell in July 1789, ‘I am not quite at ease about the safety of our friend H Williams, as I have lately heard that his Ship was rather a crazy piece of Goods – If well we shall hear from him by the next Ships from Bengal. . . . Pray don’t mention my apprehensions ab[ou]t HW.’31 These apprehensions were unfounded and on 21 August 1789 Lloyd was able to inform Powell, ‘. . . that Howell Williams is safe arrived in India, by Tom’s letter he had left Bengal with a small adventure for Madras and possibly to see his cousin E Jones – this will be welcome news to Mrs Chabert sh[oul]d his letter not reach her ere this.’ Howell Williams appears to have been the brother of Mrs Elizabeth Chabert [née Williams] of Battle and the way that Mrs Chabert and Howell Williams are referred to in John Lloyd’s letters suggests that they were related to his wife. Mrs Chabert is described by Theophilus Jones as, ‘the last of the race of the Vaughans of Escir Fechan.’ (near Merthyr Cynog) and her husband is stated to have been Lieutenant Colonel Peter Chabert who, although Swiss, had apparently been an officer in the British Army. According to Theophilus Jones, Chabert had been aide-de-camp, that is secretary and confidential assistant, to Brigadier Waldegrove whose brigade at the Battle of Minden in 1759 consisted of the 23rd Regiment of Foot (Royal Welch Fusiliers), and the 12th and 37th Regiments of Foot. However, Chabert is not listed in the records of the 12th, 23rd and 37th Regiments of Foot and a Brigadier at that time did not qualify for an aide de camp.32 Chabert must have then joined the army of the East India Company since Theophilus Jones records that he became Lieutenant-Colonel of the recently formed 108th Regiment of Foot, also known as the Madras Infantry, a British regiment in the army of English East India Company.33 The regiment was disbanded at the end of the Seven Years’ War in 1763. It is not known how he met Elizabeth Williams of Battle or when or where they married. There is no record of their marriage in the parish registers of St. Mary, St. John or St. David in Brecon or in the nearby country parishes of Battle or Aberyscir. However, around 1769 a new house was built for them in Battle.34 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 54

54 Brycheiniog

Plate 2 Colonel and Mrs Chabert c.1775. Donated to Brecknock Museum by Sir John Lloyd. Photographs by kind permission of Simon Harpur

Before leaving for India, Williams apparently left his possessions in London in Lloyd’s hands to be disposed of. In October 1790 Lloyd sent Powell, ‘. . . [the value of] all Mr H William’s effects in my hands, less £9-8-0 [£750] the Taylor’s Bill, therefore require a general and full discharge from Mrs Williams. . . . Messers Harley’s receipt is for £1635-7s-0d’.35 A note of irritation with Williams is discernible in Lloyd’s letter of January 1791, ‘I supposed you [Powell] have rec[eive]d letters from Mr H Williams. I find by his cousin Mr E Jones [in Madras] that he intended to remain in Calcutta finding that the climate now agrees with him and that his health is perfectly established – I am not favoured with a line from him, I am very surpris[e]d.’36 Powell presumably replied that nobody in Brecon had heard from Williams as in February Lloyd wrote, ‘I am much surprised that Mr H Williams has neglected you and all his friends – your Letters for India shall be taken care of.’37 Lloyd evidently met Williams in Calcutta and discovered that, ‘Poor Howell Williams lost his health in India’ and decided to return to Wales on the Manship ...38 According to the log of the Manship, Williams boarded in Calcutta and died on 17 March 1792 just before Madras was reached.39 In Madras, ‘. . . his cousin, Edward Jones took to his affairs in a regular manner – suppose you have heard from him.’40 However, Lloyd now became responsible for ensuring that William’s assets were safely returned to Brecon. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 55

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 55 Once Lloyd was back in London in November 1792 he wrote at some length to Powell about the situation. ‘As to Mr H Williams’s affairs, on Saturday next I shall forward to Mrs Chabert a large packet of Letters and papers from Mr Edw[ar]d Jones who took charge in a regular manner of Mr William’s affairs on my arrival at Madras – I never inspected his papers or was ever master of his concerns, further thus a hear say report – And am sorry to understand from Mr E Jones that his Estate will fall far short of what was expected – Mr Jones like wise informed me that his accounts and memorandums are perfectly regular and the papers will give entire satisfaction to his friends on inspection, this he has forwarded in this packet.’ ‘I have only in care from Mr E Jones a Bill drawn in favour of Mr H Williams on a house in London for 1500 pounds with instructions to pay his debts as may lawfully appear, the remainder I am instructed to give up to his Heir-at-law – what further remittance Mr Jones has to make I know not – suppose the papers to Mr Chabbert will explain – the above with a Watch and a miniature picture, silver Buttons etc are all I have.’ ‘On the moment of Mr H Williams decease all his Trunks and packages were brought on the Quarter Deck where they were Lashed with cords and Sealed by my orders in a public manner by the Officers of the Ship, and the list taken of their contents – In the above condition they were delivered to Mr E Jones at Madras on his taking out letters of administration. From my knowledge of Mr E Jones I can assure Mr H Williams friends that correct Account will be rendered of the estate.’41 Seven months later Lloyd declared in a letter to Powell in July 1792, ‘I have declined acting in Mr H Williams affairs, and have given the management to Mrs Chabert, having rec[eive]d some further small demands on the estate from India by these ships.’ However, Lloyd’s involvement continued for another 15 months. In his 1904 Historical Memoranda of Breconshire, John Lloyd, the grandson of Captain Lloyd, wrote that he had in his possession a receipt from Mrs Margaret Williams for the sum of £1,644-15s [£132,000] given to his grandfather on 26th October 1793, that is a month before Captain Lloyd boarded the Manship again for his last voyage.42

Mrs Mary Hay Mrs Hay was a ‘kinswoman’ of Elizabeth Lloyd and almost certainly lived in Wheat Street. She was the widow first of a Mr Oakley and then of Charles Hay whom she married in 1763 and who died in 1784. Charles Hay was one of the group of approximately 120 local notables appointed to oversee the implementation of the Brecon Town Improvement Act of 1776.43 There are a few passing references to Mrs Hay in the correspondence between Lloyd and 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 56

56 Brycheiniog Powell and in February 1791 Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘We are sorry to hear of Mrs Hays indisposition hope tis only a slight affair and that she will soon get better of it – poor Lady she suffers much in this World.’44 Mrs Hay realised that she was seriously ill and on 22 February she made a 5,000 word will.45 She died some five weeks later. The main beneficiaries were her ‘kinsman’ William Williams, the brother of Elizabeth Lloyd, who inherited all her unspecified property in Breconshire and Radnorshire. Land in eleven parishes in Pembrokeshire was left to a John Mears of Easington, Pembrokeshire on condition that £500 be paid to William Williams. Her thirty-nine bequests to individuals from her liquid assets, which amounted to £3,250 [£266,500] plus many silver articles and watches, give some idea of her wealth and social standing in Brecon. These bequests were left to people from a wide range of social classes varying from Augusta Wilkins of Maeslough, Joanna Williams of Tredustan and the Hughes family of Tregunter, to Jane Edwards and Mary White the widows of labourers in Brecon. Charles Hatton of Leith, a nephew of her late husband and Ann Burnside wife of the Rev. Burnside of Dumfries both received £500 and Mary Ann Williams, the daughter of William Williams was to inherit £300 when she was 21. Thomas Lawrence the son of the Rev. Lawrence of Brecon, Robert Lewis of Merthyr Cynog and Robert Williams of Brecon were each left £200. The will contains many other financial legacies varying from £100 to £10 and an even greater number of bequests of such items as a small diamond ring to ‘my friend’ Mrs Chabert; silver and gold watches, a mahogany tea chest and three silver canisters to 5 year old Anna Marie Hughes of Tregunter; silver sauce boats and ‘two diamond pins the one used for a handkerchief and the other for a hat’ to Joanna Williams and 10 guinea mourning rings for such friends as Mrs Hugh Bold and 5 guinea mourning rings for servants. The Lloyds were not forgotten, ‘Unto John Lloyd of Dinas the sum of 10 guineas to buy a Mourning Ring and unto my kinswoman Elizabeth Lloyd my Silver Urn Coffee Pot, the waiter it stands upon, my Silver Teapot, my Hoop Diamond Ring and two cases of Silver Handled knives and forks and also two large Desert Spoons.’ Probably the most surprising bequest is, ‘£300 [£24,600] to Margaret Parry servant if she be in my service at the time of my decease and all my clothes and wearing linen, bed linen, blankets, bedstead hangings, window curtains in my bedchamber and chest of drawers and five guineas to buy a mourning ring.’ Taking into consideration the generosity and range of her legacies, her bequests of, ‘£5 for the poor of the parish of St. John the Evangelist, Brecon’ and similar amounts to the poor of a parish in Radnorshire and another in Pembrokeshire appear to be but token gestures. Mrs Hay requested that £20 should be spent erecting a, ‘Handsome Marble tomb Stone to be laid on the grave of my later Sister Price with her name age 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 57

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 57 and when she died put thereon and the further sum of Twenty pounds for a Handsome Marble tomb Stone to be laid on the grave of my late Husband Charles Hay and mine . . .’ In his will Charles Hay had requested, ‘. . . my body to be buried in the most private and least expensive manner possible.’46 Theophilus Jones, in his 1809 volume of his History of Breconshire, states that the Hays’ marble monument is attached to the wall in the nave of the Priory Church close to the Havard Chapel but it has not been possible to locate the monument.47

THE HOUSE IN LION LANE [STREET] Once it was settled that Lloyd would sail in March 1791 consideration had to be given as to whether his wife would remain in London, return to Brecon to live with one of her relations or rent a house for at least two years. During their short visit to Brecon in December 1790 the Lloyds evidently decided that a house in Lion Lane owned by Longfellow, the owner of the Golden Lion Inn and several other properties in Brecon, was suitable so long as a number of alterations were made and agreement could be reached on the rent. Details regarding the negotiations feature in five letters from Lloyd to Powell and a copy of one letter from Powell to Lloyd between January and April 1791. On 7 January Lloyd informed Powell, ‘I have seen Mr Longfellow and spoke to him for Mrs Lloyd to have the House in the Lane, his price is 15 pounds per annum which I have agreed to – but as he was in a hurry could not settle particulars, but promised to make every alteration and repairs that Mrs Lloyd could reasonably wish for . . . Mrs Lloyd wishes for the following repairs and alterations viz. – another window in the Dining room, the gates and Garden Doors painted – the Inside to be clean and tenable. Please to let us know which Grates, or whether Mr Longfellow will fit them if wanted. . . . Don’t forget the road Mrs Ll lays great stress on this circumstance.’48 (Plate 1) Two weeks later Lloyd confirmed to Powell, ‘Mrs Lloyd and self begs that you fix with Longfellow immediately and consider me his tenant for three years at the rent proposed, on condition of his cutting a window in the Dining room – Mrs Lloyd wishes for a handsome paper for the Room in question of her own choosing which will cost from 7p to 8p per roll – and with myself thinks Mr L should make some allowance as probably it will be his after three years – tis customary for the Landlord to allow a certain part the tenant to pay the Difference – I think he should allow towards the paper 4p per roll and I will pay the difference. . . . Now as to a servant, Mrs L accepts the one offered on Mrs Powell’s recommendation, will take her to service from 1st April next – Mrs Ll thinks the wage is high but no consequence as she is so handsomely recommended – I think six guineas per year and to find her own Tea and sugar.’49 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 58

58 Brycheiniog

Plate 3 Facsimile of the first page of the letter dated 7th January 1791. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 59

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 59 The reaction of Longfellow to these requests is unknown but on 3 February 1791 Lloyd wrote to Powell, ‘Mrs Lloyd and Self are much obliged in your kind attention to the House business – As necessity needs no Law we must come to Mr Longfellows terms therefore close with him on the receipt of this – Mrs Ll wishes the window to be made immediately and placed opposite to the other. We think a Trough is much needed to carry off the Eaves on the entering side, particularly over the Door . . . Mrs Ll is afraid she will stick fast in the road towards the House.’ Then Mrs Lloyd asks for the same sort of information that anybody renting a house these days would also request. ‘Mrs Lloyd is desirous to have the dimensions of the following parts of the House – the Length and Breadth of the parlour – the length and breadth of the window in the Dining room with the height of the Rooms on that floor.’50 By 15 February it was clear that little progress had been made with regard to the new window and Lloyd was getting rather anxious since, ‘Mrs Lloyd will be down and ready to enter the 25 of March – that is if I possibly can prevail.’ The letter concluded with yet another reminder that Mrs Lloyd, ‘requests that the Road may not be forgotten.’51 The constant reminders regarding the road indicates that whatever work had been undertaken by the 1776 Brecon Town Improvement Act the condition of at least Lion Lane [Street] was still unsatisfactory and was the responsibility of the owners of the properties. In order to make the entrance to the house more attractive on 2 March Lloyd sent down, ‘a few sprigs of laurel which Mrs Lloyd begs you to plant (that is cause to be planted) in the Court or entrance to the House, against the paling as Mr Longfellow has refused to paint them.’ At last on 29 March Powell was able to report to Lloyd, ‘The House is near finished – Longfellow is a sad Hand to deal with he is full of promises but a shabby one at performing – we are in Expectation of seeing Mrs Lloyd before the end of the Week and we hope she will come safe and well.’ Powell also commented, ‘I sho[uld] suppose that you now wish that we hadn’t closed with him Mrs Hay’s House being come to the family.’52 Powell’s unflattering comment on Longfellow however is not so virulent as that of the Hon. John Byng when he visited Brecon in 1787, ‘. . . I received some assistance from the master of the inn [the Golden Lion], Mr Longfellow a talkative conceited blockhead, who was full of conversation.’53 The final comment on the house was made by Lloyd on 1 April, ‘Ere this you will have Mrs Lloyd down – pray assist her in all her difficulties that may arise – I am sure she will be thankful – This last windfall will make my friend Williams comfortable I trust – Your observation ab[ou]t the houses is just – though for my own part I think Longfellow the best of the two – tis true that any Old Woman can have more Stare Gosing [casually observing] from the Upper one [Mrs Hay’s house in Wheat Street].’54 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 60

60 Brycheiniog The descriptions of the house have enabled it to be identified as 6 Lion Street, which was next to the Golden Lion in Lion Lane.

JOHN LLOYD MAN OF PROPERTY Lloyd inherited from his father various mortgaged properties located near the family home of Dinas, Llanwrtyd. He later became the owner of a number of houses, or parts of houses in or near Brecon which had belonged to his wife’s family or his brother David (who had gone to India in 1786). David had inherited property from his maternal grandfather, Jones of Dan-y-Crug, a former High Sheriff of Breconshire. Walter Powell acted as Lloyd’s agent with regard to the collection of rents and the maintenance of the properties.

Llanwrtyd Lloyd’s letter of 29 February 1788 to Powell was largely concerned with his property in the Llanwrtyd. It mentions a variety of matters related to ‘Dynas’, ‘Cwmirvon’, ‘Cwmbach’, ‘Maesgwilod mill’ and the ‘Wear’ [weir], and he comments about David Watkins of Maesgwilod mill, ‘I believe this fellow be very worthless, idle and poor . . . the Care of the Woods are my greatest concern pray give the Tenants strict charge on that head, I insist that they do not burn any Wood . . . Mr David Jones of V[F]anog [a kinsman] has a long story to tell you on that subject – if you can pray punish the offenders.’55 Nothing more is mentioned in the letters regarding his property until the period when he was seeking to raise money and obtain a ‘good voyage.’ In February 1790 he requested Powell to, ‘Pray push William Waters for his rents, I left the Acc[oun]t with you, should he not pay, better quit.’ and on 5 April he wrote, ‘I wish you to frighten my tenant at Cwmbach possibly it may have a good effect on the others.’56 Dinas was rented to David Price and Lloyd regarded him as a troublesome tenant and later in April he wrote to Powell, ‘Am sadly afraid that he [Price] is playing the Devil with my Woods – if he does by heaven I will have no mercy on him – Pray keep a look out after him, he is a slippery fellow, has too much of the Jesuitical cant – he expects to be off next March – not a word to him.’57 By September Lloyd had decided, ‘Now to Dynas – please order David Price to quit Lady Day next in regular manner – Should he ask for a reason you may inform him that I am not pleased with his general Conduct and I intend to keep the House and some part of the land in my own hands . . . At all events give him notice to quit. Let the messenger inform Tom Daniel that he shall have the whole of his new farm, and that I shall look to him for the Care of the Woods etc. Now for David Evans of Cwmyrvon, [Cwmirfon] please let him 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 61

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 61 know that his rent in future must be 30 Guineas per year, he can’t think much of this when his taking is worth forty. Should he disapprove, I shall have no objection to take it up; I know of no reason why my little should be under let more than my neighbours – I find none so inclined towards J Lloyd.’58 Lloyd must have relented with regard to David Price because in April 1791 he wrote to Powell, ‘At all events send David Price ab[ou]t his business next year – I expect many impositions but beg your assistance to make them as few as possible – I will twig [reprove] some of the lads should I live to come among them.’59 The condition and development of woods was a matter of considerable concern to Lloyd, as it was to a large number of naval men, including Anson and Nelson. In September 1790 he asked Powell, ‘. . . please to send Tom Daniel to employ more hands to get the little Piece of Ground he was upon cleared as fast as possible and to prepare the little Nursery for as many firs as will fit it – when it is ready I will send them down by the Builth wagon as being more convenient to Llanwrtid.’60 The following month he wrote, ‘I have this day dispatched in a Hamper four thousand Fir plants [to be planted at Dinas] directed to your care by North’s Wagon. But rather than let them lay out on the Ground pray forward as soon as convenient. Tom will readily come if you can send to him as you know he likes to get a few Shillings as well as his Master.’61 However the project to create this coniferous plantation did not succeed and in March 1791 Lloyd wrote, ‘Am sorry to find the Firs have failed tis now too late to replace them this season.’ 62 One of the first landlords to have fir trees planted on his estate in Wales was Lord Mansell of Margam around 1738 and some of the earliest planting of firs in Breconshire was at Penpont, near Brecon about 1750.63 In 1778 John Bullock Lloyd, no relation, purchased 100 spruce fir trees for planting on his land in Breconshire. Captain Lloyd was not deterred by the failure of his first attempt to create a fir plantation since according to John Lloyd the historian, ‘Captain Lloyd [his grandfather] at his old home, Dinas, Llanwrtyd, and on his newly purchased Abercynrig estate, planted thousands of trees.’64 As an absentee landlord Lloyd had, as already indicated, some problems in ensuring that the rents were paid and he was prepared to take firm action against tenants who he believed abused his trust and did not meet their obligations. However, he was also conscious of his responsibilities as a landlord. In December 1790 he advised Powell, ‘If I make a good Voyage [I] do intend to lay out more money on my poor friends in Llanwrtid.’65 Tom Daniel, who wrote a clear hand in English,66 is mentioned in fourteen letters between April 1790 and November 1791 and appears to have been trusted with keeping an eye on all John Lloyd’s properties in Llanwrtyd and informing Walter Powell of any developments. However, much of this correspondence is concerned with the condition of his house, Clungurnant, about half a mile from Dinas, and the building of more substantial accommodation. In 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 62

62 Brycheiniog June 1790 Lloyd wrote, ‘Don’t know what to say ab[ou]t Building for Tom Daniel, no good can be expected of those Damned Rogues in the Hundred of Builth.’67 Lloyd evidently agreed, in principle, to a new house for Daniel but progress was not rapid and in January 1791 Lloyd informed Powell, ‘. . . in a few days I will send you the plan of the intended building at Clungurnant – it must not exceed £20 Guineas – I think Tom should begin to prepare the Lime and Stone, and to know where to lay his hand on a good honest mason to undertake the whole – I think David, a Carmarthenshire man, the best and likely to do me justice – I intend to employ many odd jobs should I ever have a little time on my hands.’68 However by 3 February Lloyd had reconsidered the amount he was prepared to spend on the new house, ‘You may tell Tom Daniel that he must not exceed twenty five or twenty eight pounds – the plan I will soon send you.’69 and twelve days later, ‘On second thoughts wish Tom Daniel would go on with his building – the plan I will send you by 1st March.’70 However, on 2 March, ‘My plan as follows – or rather will send you soon – if Mr T Daniel must have a House.’71 But on 15 March Lloyd’s letter to Powell outlines his concern about the proposed house, ‘ I am much at a loss what to say to you ab[ou]t the necessary buildings at Clungurnant, as I now clearly foresee the difficulties that will arise, and the little satisfaction I am likely to have in the execution when I reflect who are to be the Architectures (on this mighty occasion) – so that I think it w[oul]d be both our interests to let it stand till my return from this Voyage – See if you can persuade my friend Tom to come to this Idea tell him tis my wish knowing that I w[oul]d not be pleased with the form and construction of what he might build. Should fortune favour ‘tis my intention to build on Clungurnant a better kind of House, therefore hope Tom will not be over pressing on this occasion – pray drop me a line, giving your opinion and advice on this business – I would not like to exceed £30 – at the same time I think the sum too small when not attended in person – and it will only be an Amusement when I return.’72 Within a fortnight there was a dramatic new development outlined in Walter Powell’s letter to Lloyd on 29 March. ‘Tom Daniel was here yesterday with a very dejected countenance the house [his existing house] having fallen down, by which one of his children’s Leg was broken in 3 place and his wife much alarmed . . . Tom has consented to shift, as to a House, until you Return, upon an abatem[en]t of 40s a year returned. I think it very reasonable. The Timber has been partly recovered, viz. squared.’73 In the same letter Powell informed Lloyd that Tom Daniel, ‘. . . has been served with a notice at our Sess’s [legal sessions held in Brecon] at Tom Joseph’s suit for 10 guineas & upon his asking Joseph why he served him he hav[in]g never had any Dealings with him, Joseph replied that it was for so much Money w[hi]ch Tom had carried from him; Joseph to your father for which he has 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 63

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 63 Tom’s Rec[eip]t. Tom has desired me to appraise you of the Matter & begs to hear from you, how he is to act – He positively declares that he never had any Money concerns with Joseph but on your Father’s acc[oun]t & that was only to carry Money from one to the other.’ This letter must have been sent by the fastest method possible since Lloyd replied on 1 April. ‘I have received both yours and am very sorry for the misfortune to poor Tom’s Child and fright of his Wife – As to Tom Joseph’s attack on Tom Daniel, am not surprised at – as I think him equal to anything of this kind – When in the Country, I made the utmost inquiries ab[ou]t Mr Joseph’s demands on my father, found them totally unsupported by Bills, Bonds or Notes, by which I could judge that my Father could be indebted to Joseph – I understand by Tom Daniel and others that my F[ather] intimated that Joseph was in debt to him . . . When I administered my F[ather]’s eff[ect]s I paid every shilling that was even asked, and that I could find any reason or information that they were just – w[oul]d have done the same by Mr J had I not my doubts on the head, and informed by several of the neighbours that they thought it impossible, and even intimated that he must have owed My Father a balance on the collection of the Tythes – it has been my firm belief and ever will remain that Joseph is indebted to my F[athe]r’s estate – he is a dangerous fellow and expect he will grow desperate soon – As to my part, I have given him my Answer, and that I had paid many hundred pounds for My Father more than I rec[eive]d, and would have done it over and over again, when I think them just and due – but not to any fellow that shall dare say you are in my debt, right or wrong . . . If Mr Joseph makes any demands on me, I am ready to defend – though difficult against such characters.’74 According to D. L. Wooding, ‘Joseph the Agent’ collected the tithes for the Gwynnes of Garth, who had purchased from the Church of England the right to collect and keep the revenue raised by the tithes. Wooding maintained that Joseph was a ruthless character who burnt the cornricks of farmers who were slow to pay their tithes. The robust reaction of Captain Lloyd to the demands of Thomas Joseph was not surprising from a man who had faced many hardships and hazardous situations during his life. But his indecision regarding the new house seems to be untypical of a man so used to commanding men and taking decisive action when at sea. However, it should be remembered that from January 1791 until 27 April, when the Manship passed Beachy Head, Lloyd was fully occupied in preparing the ship and the crew for the voyage to India.75 The situation regarding Tom Daniel’s house must have seemed an irritating distraction. While Lloyd was away Powell made an agreement with Tom Daniel: ‘RENTAL AGREEMENT for Clungurnant, Dinas Mill Cottages and the Hill Little Farm held by David Price who has his taking to 25 March next. MEMORDANDUM as to letting Dinas to Tom Daniel from 25 March 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 64

64 Brycheiniog [1792] for 12 months for £40 clear. But in the case Mr Lloyd shall at any time within the 12 months wish to take the whole into his own Hands (Clungurnant excepted) he is to have the possession immediately (paying Tom Daniel for his labour and money expended on the same.) At the rate of £37. Mr Lloyd is to satisfy Tom Daniel for taking care of the sheep, for the roof of which Mr Lloyd is also to pay.’76

Brecon John Lloyd’s property in the Brecon area according to a rent roll prepared in 1791 consisted of, ‘House in Ship Street, David Morgan [tenant], £16 [per annum]; 3 moieties [parts] of a house in Llanfaes, Wm. Watton, Currier, £1-15s, Evan Evans, Smith, £1-15s, Richard Bulcott 15s; room over a shop in Llanfaes, John Morgan, £1-5s; 1/3 house & garden in Vennyfach, widow of David Griffith, 12s - 4d; another house & garden in Vennyfach, Watkins, £1-15s.’77 Lloyd was also the owner of a property known as the Rock and Castle, on the Honddu, some two hundred yards beyond the last house in The Struet, Brecon. The rent was not included on the rent roll because it was not let at that time. On 1 April 1790 Walter Powell informed Lloyd that a Mr Thomson, a linen weaver, had offered a rent of six guineas for one year if shutters were made for the upper window, and two new windows made in the cellar and he pointed out that, ‘This is the only offer have had . . . and the rent is as much as anybody will give.’78 Lloyd replied that, ‘. . . you have my approbation to let the Rock and Castle to Thomson, as I suppose he will provide some security for the rent – Care must be taken in opening Windows in the Cellar as it will be very apt to weaken the House and it appears to me then additional Windows will make the Tax run high; if not more that 4 or 5 shillings no consequence. If I recollect Mr Chas Powell gave the Character of Thompson as very idle fellow and in his debt.’79 The agreement was not finalised. The next person to show an interest in the Rock and Castle was Lloyd’s Uncle David who lived in Newport but in June 1790 he decided not to move there because, ‘. . . he thinks the Rock and Castle to[o] far from Church and market, so that you see the old Gentleman intends to eat as well as pray.’80 Eventually in August 1792, while Lloyd was at sea, Walter Powell made an agreement with a Jeremiah Powell, a skinner, ‘Regarding the Dwelling-house and Garden, Rock and Castle, from 29th September for one year, renewable; yearly rent of £5 payable quarterly. Said Jeremiah Powell to put and keep the roof and tiling of the premises in repair; to keep and leave everything in the inside in repair. The said Jeremiah Powell to pay all the taxes.’81 About five years after he retired John Lloyd had the original building knocked down and had a fulling mill built on the site. This was rented for £14-14s-0d a year in 1802 to a David Rees.82 The mill 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 65

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 65 continued to operate until around 1870.83 When it closed four cottages were built on the site, which were eventually demolished in 1971 when the road was widened.

COMMERCIAL INTERESTS IN BRECONSHIRE 1792–94 There is little in the letters and documents about general economic developments in Brecon or Llanwrtyd let alone in Wales. However, John Lloyd of Aberanell, Captain Lloyd’s relation, had been one of the founding members of the Brecknockshire Agricultural Society in 1755, one of the Commissioners appointed to oversee the Brecon Town Improvement Act of 1776 and purchased five of the original one thousand £100 shares in the Brecon–Abergavenny Canal in 1793. Although John Lloyd paid considerable attention to his property in Llanwrtyd there is no indication that he attempted to persuade his tenants to introduce any of the new initiatives proposed by the Agricultural Society or showed any interest in the developing popularity of the spa at Dolycoed, adjacent to his land in Llanwrtyd, which according to a report in the Hereford Journal on 9 June 1777 had, ‘much improved accommodation’. However, he did invest in the search for lead on his land. Also, unsurprisingly, he showed considerable interest in the development of the canal to Brecon and when he retired he was a founding shareholder of the very successful and profitable Brecon Boat Company.

The search for lead The first search for lead on the Lloyd’s land had probably been undertaken by his grandfather, who had been involved in various unsuccessful business ventures.84 The mine, which was located close to where Nant Gyrnant joins Nant Lledgwial, a tributary of the Irfon, about a quarter of a mile from Dinas, was the only lead mine in Breconshire in the eighteenth century.85 In a letter to Walter Powell in April 1791, just before he set sail on his first voyage as Captain of the Manship, Lloyd commented, ‘If I make a good voyage [I] do intend to set the Lead Mines at work – a little money that way could be well spent – if not of no consequence.’86 From April 1793 to March 1794 eight short memoranda were written by James Lowe, the son of John Lowe the main contractor, regarding the development of the prospective lead mine. These memoranda were sent to Walter Powell, as Lloyd’s agent, as Lloyd was in London, or at sea, during this period. The memoranda give details of the contracts between James Lowe, and the miners, for example, ‘Memorandum 14 July 1793. Edward William and Co, 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 66

66 Brycheiniog did in my presence agree with James Lowe on the part of John Lloyd Esq & Co [the ‘& Co’ is a mistake] to employ themselves and other working Miners to sink a few yards in the Great course by the Brook to try a strong body of Black Jack [a blackish soft slate of little commercial value] at the rate of £2-2s-0d a yard. Earnest [advance payment] 2s. Witness John Lowe.’87 The fifth Memorandum written in September 1793 indicates that the potential of the mine was different from what was envisaged, ‘Daniel James and co, did in my presence Agree with James Lowe on the part of John Lloyd Esq to employ themselves and other 1 working Miners to Drive 2 ⁄2 yards of Level from the Close head along the Copper vein in the Dingle under the bed of the River for the convenience of sinking upon the same rate of £2 a yard in part of which James Lowe gave the above Company – Earnest 2s Witness John Lowe.’88 James Lowe of Dolygors was involved in the development of a large number of other lead mines in Wales.89 In October 1793 the Manship left the Thames and no more is heard of the mine until James Lowe wrote to Powell in January 1794 explaining that his father had had an accident. ‘Yesterday he meant to wait upon Mrs Lloyd and yourself to consult in regard Dinas Mines etc. I was down at the Mines yesterday found the Miners at Work in Sinking on the Copper which appears very strong

Plate 4 The entrance to one of the adits – a horizontal passage – into the mine. Reproduced by permission of Ruth Bidgood 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 67

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 67

1 and promising they have sunk about 5 ⁄2 yards. We lately received a letter from Capt Lloyd wherein he says he wishes to continue with the Sinking to the Depth of 10 or 12 yards according as my Father sees the prospect which at present is very good this he wishes to have done before he leaves the Kingdom [the Manship was at Portsmouth until May 1794 while a convoy was being assembled] after that my Father will send him a Report of the Work and his opinion of the same then he will determine whether to carry it on his own accord, stop it or let it upon lease. . . . You will please deliver the enclosed to Mrs Lloyd.’90 John Lowe wrote the promised report on 10 March 1794. Overall it was positive about the prospects for the mine but, ‘This sink is so much troubled with water that every gush of Rain the River breaks in upon us and drowns the whole. This part can never be worked to any advantage without having a Level or Drain under the work to take off the Day water and to stop the progress of the River. This Cut will be about 70 yards in Length and will go in a depth of about 30 yards under the Sink and will at least cost £150 but have a very good chance of making Discoveries by the Driving of the Level along the Vein. As there is no doubt but there must be a large Body of Copper near the place. This Sink can be let to Raise copper in the present State for about £20 a ton . . .’ ‘There is about 15 or 20 ton of Copper and 3 tons of Black Jack may be raised. The Copper may be let to Dress at £5-5s a ton and the Black Jack at 10s-6d . . . John Lowe has a respectable company of Gentlemen of large property that would be very glad to take the work providing they could have it on moderate terms . . . for 31 or 25 years at least as they mean to drive a Capital level from above the Mill to cut the Vein and to drive along the Vein till they come under the work which will be about 500 yards in length and will take about 8 years before it will be complete. If this proposal meets Lloyd’s approbation should be glad of an Answer as soon as Possible that J Lowe may represent the case to the Gentlemen.’91 Captain Lloyd evidently did not accept this proposal and on 23 January 1853 a lease was signed between James Lowe and John Lloyd, the son of Captain Lloyd to work, ‘Minerals under Dinas Farm’. No lead was ever found at Dinas but in 1844 a large amount of lead was mined at Abergwesyn, five miles to the north of Dinas, and around a hundred men were employed there.

The Canal Lloyd referred to the development of the Brecon–Abergavenny canal in two letters to Walter Powell. Almost as soon as he returned to London from his 1791–2 voyage he wrote, ‘In your next let me know how the Canal goes on. I suppose it has reduced the price of Coles at Brecon one-third of its former price – how the farms will flourish in the Vale of Brecon – hope you have engaged a 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 68

68 Brycheiniog large tract of Land – do you think it possible to continue the Canal by the Cruggin I mean the land on the brow of the Epping [Epynt] in which case we may participate in the advantage of the Hundred of Builth.’92 (This seems to be a joke possibly referring to the idea of taking the canal from Brecon at 450 feet by the side of the Crug to Upper Chapel at almost 1,000 feet!). Intriguingly this letter indicates that discussions regarding the potential building of the canal were taking place in Breconshire before Lloyd set sail in February 1791 and it is interesting that it was written four months before the Act of Parliament authorising the building of the canal on 28 March 1793. On October 24 1793, just before the Manship left Gravesend, Lloyd referred to the canal again in a letter which, for the first time hints at a degree of tension between the two men, ‘Pray go around all my friends and say what you Please, you know better what than J Lloyd. . . . Pray don’t talk of the Land of promises with such indifference, I yet hope to see a full flowing Canal from one end to the other of it boarded with numberless barges with rich Cargoes.’93 Fifteen days later Lloyd requested the return from Walter and John Powell of, ‘. . . all Deeds and Papers in their custody belonging to me and my Wife.’94 When in the mid- 1940s Sir John Lloyd read this note he commented, ‘A Memorandum which is difficult to understand as it looks as if John Lloyd and Walter Powell are parting company.’ Unlike previous occasions when John Lloyd’s ship was waiting in the Thames for several months before leaving for India there are no further extant letters from Lloyd to Powell even though the Manship did not depart from Portsmouth until 7 May nor apparently were there any letters from Lloyd to Powell when the voyage was completed. However, in September 1797, after he retired, Lloyd entered into a business relationship with Jeffreys Wilkins, John Powell, John Pierce and, for a short period, Walter Powell and in 1800–1 Walter Powell acted as Lloyd’s solicitor during the protracted negotiations to purchase the Abercynrig estate.

FINANCIAL PRESSURES 1788–96: BANKRUPTCY OR A FORTUNE It was generally accepted that in the maritime service of the East India Company it was not until the rank of second mate had been reached that, ‘. . . pay and allowances afford him [an officer] a maintenance’.95 Lloyd did not reach this rank until 1781 yet by 1777 he had already cleared his father’s debts of around £1,500–£1,800.96 Then by February 1788 after he had been a First Mate for only one voyage he not only succeeded in settling his deceased father’s debts and redeeming the mortgage on the family’s properties in the Llanwrtyd area but also had enough capital to consider paying, for another property, ‘16–18 Hundred pounds – but should Mrs Lloyd and you approve I shall have no objection to make it another Hundred. . . . I am apprehensive that Mr Lloyd of Aberannel [a 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 69

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 69 distant relation] will give much more than the Value, if so we must give it up – no harm in trying.’97 £1,900 is the equivalent of around £160,000 in 2005. His strong financial position in 1777 was almost certainly the result of the time he spent as Second Mate in the very profitable ‘country trade’ in the Far East and then returned to England from Hong Kong as a temporary Chief Mate on the Morse.98 There is also little doubt that he was an astute manager of his finances. An important task, which Lloyd had to attend to before leaving for Wales in June 1789, after completing his second voyage to India as First Mate, was the sale of his private trade from India. The records in the OIOC show that Lloyd invested in private trade and if he had used his maximum allowance of six tons from India in 1789 he would have anticipated making a profit of around 300% which based on typical returns at that time would be somewhere around £700 [£58,000]. But when he returned to London in August 1789 he wrote an unusually disjointed and somewhat bewildering letter to Powell largely concerned with financial matters. ‘My sister Margaret [aged 24] is married and I believe to a deserving young man, a Haberdasher in Newgate St (named Henry Parsons). Am to pay my sister’s legacy in a few days, therefore beg you will send me a regular receipt that is, such as I may take from the partly, jointly – My Mother’s legacy and Grandfathers must be seperately mentioned, in all £162 [£13,500] the interest has been accounted for . . . I beg that you will require immediately payment from Mr G Lewis, for I assure you that I am in real want of money, this voyage has half ruined me. Am afraid the next will demand the little in your hands. Is it possible to borrow money in Wales – I shall want ab[ou]t a thousand [£83,000] bye and bye.’99 The large amount required suggests that he must have been apprised of the fact that Captain Gregorie, in whose patronage lay the appointment of the next Captain [Commander] of the Manship, intended to resign and that Gregorie had agreed to ‘sell’ his command to Lloyd. Commands of ships were ‘purchased’ from the previous Commander and as such were regarded as a form of transferable property. The ‘ship’s husband’ [managing owner] Jeffrey Jackson, who had enlisted as a 5th Mate in 1748 and after twenty-two years was promoted to Captain of the Speke – in a career not dissimilar to Lloyd’s – would then have presented Lloyd as the new Commander of the Manship to the Court of the Directors of the East India Company for approval. Sometimes this approval was withheld. On completion of the appointment process Lloyd would have given Gregorie £5,000 which was the standard amount at that time for a captaincy. Although it was not impossible to lose money on private trade it was unusual for such an experienced person as Lloyd to be, ‘half ruined’ by a voyage. The request for information regarding borrowing money in Wales is baffling. He must have been aware that in 1778 Walter and Jeffreys Wilkins from Brecon, both former merchants in the East India Company, had with Walter Jeffreys and 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 70

70 Brycheiniog William Williams, established the well-regarded Brecon Bank. Also in London there were plenty of opportunities for officers in the East India Company to borrow large sums at 5% interest if unable to raise the capital from his own resources. It is possible, but unlikely, that he may have contracted ‘respondentia bonds’ to procure his private trade.100 He would have known that being promoted to Captain of the Manship would cost him at least £5,000 so the £1,000 was possibly required as a deposit in connection with his anticipated promotion. The need for money and the importance of obtaining a ‘good voyage’ are major themes in several of his letters in 1790. By the 1790s the most sought after voyages were those to Bombay and then on to Canton. Lloyd would have wanted to avoid at all cost a voyage to Benkulen in Java, which offered very little opportunity for private trade. In February he asked Powell to, ‘Pray push William Waters for his rents . . . should he not pay [he had] better quit – I am apt to think that Jones and Davies of Presteigne are not very safe, therefore please to make an immediate demand on them.’ The same letter gives some indication of how important and difficult it was to get a ‘good voyage’, ‘Doubtful whether we shall come into Wales this summer as I must keep a good lookout for a Voyage that may be worth going – in your next pray let me know if Mr Walter Wilkins has any connection with a Mr Woodhouse Hereford man and one of our Directors. Mr Woodhouse is high on the list of Directors, consequently much in his power. A good voyage is all I want as a set off. Pray make this enquiry on some of your excursions to Maeslough [Maesllwch, Glasbury, the home of Walter Wilkins] or when an opportunity may offer – pray let all friends know that we are well, particularly Mrs Williams [the mother of Elizabeth Lloyd] and our friends in Wheat Street – you will please to receive from David Price of Dynas £25 due in March next and the rent of the House in Sheep Street, all the other little matters you know of.’101 It is interesting that Lloyd did not feel he could contact Walter Wilkins directly. He must have known that Wilkins was a former important servant of the East India Company and was brought up in Brecon but it looks as if at this time Lloyd had had no social contact with the Wilkins family. On 5 April 1790 Lloyd was able to advise Powell, ‘I saw Mr Wilkins when in town and made my wishes known, he has promised me every assistance with Mr Woodhouse in his power.’ but be also commented that, ‘the ship requires all the money I can perfectly scrape together or borrow.’102 Five months later he wrote, ‘I have now the pleasure to inform you that I have a very flattering prospect of a choice Voyage, next Wednesday is the appointed day for the stationing of the Ships (this to yourself till I am positive).’103 However his hopes were not fully realised and on 27 September he wrote to Powell, ‘Since my last to you, our voyages are fixed the Manship is appointed to Madras and Bengal a late ship, don’t expect to sail before March – I had a very hard push to get the Appointment.’104 Then in October, the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 71

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 71 Court of Directors formally appointed, ‘Mr John Lloyd, Commander of the Manship, 41 Years of Age, Used the Sea for 25 Years, 8 voyages to India the last as Chief Mate of this Ship.’105 This rather confused sequence of events is a good example of the common practice whereby positions were filled long before the formal procedures endorsed the reality. In 1790 Lloyd gave Captain Gregorie £5,000 for the captaincy and the following year he invested at least £3,700 on his private trade to India and the food, wine and clothes he bought to sell to passengers and any soldiers he was transporting to India. This made a total likely investment of around £9,000 [£740,000] before he set sail on his first voyage as Captain of the Manship. If the ship had a good complement of passengers to both directions and he made an average return on his private trade to and from India he would hope to make a profit of at least £25,000 [£2,000,000]. If disaster struck as the result of very adverse trading, or other inimical conditions, he would, like his father before him, be bankrupt. The outcome was far from certain, it was not unknown for ships’ captains to be ruined as the result of their private trade to the extent that they had to petition the Company’s Poplar Fund, a hardship relief fund, for support.

The private trade of Captain Lloyd106 Once John Lloyd was promoted to Captain of an Indiaman he stood a good chance of retiring with a considerable fortune because of a whole range of “perquisites” or “indulgences” granted by the Company to Captains. The most significant of these was the right of captains to ship, free of charge, 56 tons of 1 their own private trade to India and 30 ⁄2 tons back to England. However, shipwreck or other external circumstances could result in financial disaster. John Lloyd appears to have led a rather frugal life and, as described earlier, by 1777 he had succeeded in saving enough money to clear his father’s current debts of around £1,600 and after his death in 1785 he once again cleared more debts and redeemed the mortgage on the family’s property. Three years later he was able to consider paying up to £1900 [£160,000] for another property. Whatever his financial situation in 1789, when he asked Walter Powell if he knew where he could borrow money in Wales, by October 1790 he was able to pay Captain Gregorie £5,000 for his captaincy and invest at least £3,900 in his private trade and goods to be sold to his passengers. It is not known how much of this was borrowed and how much came from his savings. If he borrowed about half, the interest would have been around £18,000 per annum in 2005 value. Lloyd’s expenditure on private trade was modest compared with some other captains. John Wordsworth, the Captain of the Abergavenny, and brother of William Wordsworth, borrowed money from other members of his family and, 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 72

72 Brycheiniog as he explained to his brother in a letter on 24 January 1805, ‘I got my investment upon the best of terms having paid ready money for a great part of it which I was enabled to do by one Gentleman lending me £5,000 (my investment) it amounts to about £20,000.’107 Unfortunately, the ship was wrecked in the English Channel with the loss of most of the crew and passengers, including John Wordsworth.108 The first existing page detailing Captain Lloyd’s outward private trade consists of the figure of £2,415-12-7 [£190,000] carried over from previous missing pages and a list of a further 22 items. These include, ‘Toys by Montford & Co. £94-11-0; Watches by Mr Hughes £121-2-6; Glassware by Parker & Son £144- 10-7; Jewelry by James Neild £98-0-0, Sadlery by Alex McIntosh £152-0-0; Shoes by Peter Warne £22-8-0 The total carried over to the next page is £3,742-8-2 so presumably there were more items to be added. The list contains two surprising entries, ‘By Rees Lloyd, Slops [clothes] £9’ and ‘By Rees Lloyd, chest £1.’ John Lloyd had a brother Rees who was born in 1756 and a Rees Lloyd signed on as ‘Seaman Ordinary’ on the Manship 13 April 1791, the day before the voyage began, at the monthly rate of 20/-. If this Rees was the third of the brothers who John Lloyd arranged to go to India, it explains why the cost of ‘slops’ and ‘chest’ for Rees Lloyd appear in John Lloyd’s personal accounts. It is recorded in the ship’s wages ledger that Rees Lloyd ‘ran’ in Calcutta on 10 January 1792 and he was paid £13-8-0 for ‘8 Months 28 Days Wages at 30/- per month’, which was the rate for experienced seamen on that voyage.110 It was not unusual for seamen to ‘run’ in Calcutta or Madras, often with the full connivance of the captain and then obtain far more lucrative work on ‘country ships’. The early 1800s were the peak period for ‘country ships’ in the lucrative Bombay–China trade and large numbers of former sailors on EIC ships were attracted to it. The East India Register volumes for 1803–5 contain lists of ‘European Inhabitants’ in Calcutta, Madras and Bombay. The Bombay list includes ‘Lloyd, Rees, mariner.’ but it is not possible to confirm that this Rees Lloyd was the brother of Captain Lloyd. The items purchased by John Lloyd for sale to civilian and military passengers cost him £208-2-5 and included 13 different items of clothing, such as shirts, caps, trousers, buckles and shoes costing £96-10-0 from Evans & Co.; £28-5-7 worth of tobacco from Robert and George Harris and £83-2-5 of groceries, of which £46-13-4 was for tea, from Middleditch & Co.111 However, goods sold and money lent to the crew was the prerogative of the ship’s purser. The information on John Lloyd’s homeward investment is considerably fuller.112 The cost of the goods purchased in Bengal is given as 60227 Sica Rupees equivalent to approximately £7,000 and included such textiles as Jamawars, Coloured Romals, Bandanoes, Pullicate Silk Romals, Tanjebs, Rang Dorea, Sapan Wood, Cowries, Sugar and Rice. [See Appendix]. The articles purchased 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 73

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 73 in Fort St. George [Madras] cost 4948 Gold Star Pagodas and 14724 Star Pagodas, the equivalent together of £9,160.113 It has been calculated that the private trade investment by all ships’ officers in the maritime service of the East India Company in 1792 realised a profit of 600%.114 It was possible to make a loss but it is likely that in October–November 1791 there was a ‘sellers’ market’ in India for the ‘luxury’ products from Britain. The reason is that in 1791 the EIC commissioned only eleven ships, of about 800 tons, to Bengal as opposed to the more usual fifteen to twenty. The ships docked in the river Hughli over a period of two months and the earlier a ship docked the more demand there was for the private trade. The Manship was the seventh of the eleven ships to anchor in the Hughli from where the ships were unloaded and the goods transported over fifty miles up river to the Custom House at Calcutta. There must have been considerable demand for Captain Lloyd’s private trade as he was able to purchase around £16,000 [£1.1 million] of homewards private trade. The Manship reached the Thames in November 1792 and on Sunday 1 December, ‘The inspector came on board and cleared the ship’. By then there would already have been some anxiety in London that trade with India could become more difficult if war was declared between France and Britain, which duly happened on 1 February 1793 so the market for his private trade was probably buoyant. If it is assumed that John Lloyd sold his private trade not for the six times calculated by Parkinson for all ship’s officers for the 1791–2 voyages the but for only three times the amount he paid for it, his profit would have been about £2,200,000 in current value. In addition to this profit he would have received considerable sums from his forty-three passengers on the outward journey who paid him, as opposed to the EIC, and twenty-seven homeward passengers not only for their berths, for which they are likely to have paid anything between £50–£100 [£4,100–£8,200] but also from selling them food and drink. There were also other significant perquisites such as primage – a percentage of the total earnings made during the voyage – which by 1792 could amount for a captain to around £10,000 in 2005 value. Offset against these substantial earnings, Lloyd’s expenses before the voyage commenced amounted to around £9,000. An unknown factor is how much as a part owner of the Manship he would have had to invest in preparing the ship for the voyage but in return he would have shared the total, unknown, profit made by the voyage. On 1 June 1790 Lloyd wrote to Walter Powell that he had ‘. . . some very good passengers engaged for Madras.’115 At the end of that voyage on 30th October 1792 he informed him, ‘As a friend you have the right to know the good or bad fortune that may have attended my voyage, on the whole I have no right to complain, as the ship has been full of passengers out and home, though not of the first rate, something will be got from them – trade has been very so-so, 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 74

74 Brycheiniog tho[ugh] I expect to do as well as my brother officers. All depends on the winding up at last.’116 He omitted to tell Walter Powell that one of the homeward passengers, Mr Petrie, was a Member of the Governing Council of Madras and eminent enough to be saluted by eleven guns when he came on board. If consideration is given to Lloyd’s background and the vicissitudes of his service in the maritime service of the East Indian Company, it is not surprising that he was very circumspect in what he wrote about the profitability of voyages as Captain, even to his solicitor and close friend like Walter Powell. There is no record of Lloyd ever depositing money with a British bank, let alone the highly regarded Brecon Old Bank of Wilkins & Co., but there is evidence that he had an account with the General Bank of India, which was established in 1786 four years before he was promoted to Captain. His account book with the General Bank of India is in the National Library of Wales but unfortunately all the relevant pages have been removed.117 After he died the detailed administration of his estate undertaken by the Stamp Office to assess ‘Legacy Duty on Residues of Personal Estate, etc.’ recorded that John Lloyd had no ‘Cash at the Bankers’.118 Presumably the officers of the Stamp Office did not have access to the records of the General Bank of India, rather like the situation with a numbered Swiss bank account in 2005. In the Journal of the Manship for Lloyd’s next voyage in 1794–5 there are references to private trade on both the outwards and homewards journey. A document found in Captain Lloyd’s own copy of the Journal, which is in the possession of the family, records what appears to be £11,037 of his private trade from India. The Company’s cargo loaded on the Manship in India amounted to £112,970. However, for various reasons, it is extremely unlikely that the voyage was as profitable as that of 1791–2. In 1794, because of the war with France, fifty-three ships were commissioned to sail, most in convoy, to the East. Of these, twenty-two ships were destined for India. Four arrived in Bengal before 10 September, seven docked between 11–23 September 1794 and 7, including the Manship, arrived on 15 October and the others were close behind. The competition to sell ‘private trade’ must have been intense. The return voyage of the Manship to London was longer and more fraught than usual because of the engagement with the Dutch East Indiamen but of the thirty ships which left India for London in 1795 the Manship was the eighth to dock in London on 15 October 1795. Captain Lloyd’s profit on the voyage is likely to have been less than in 1791–2. However, in early 1796 he would have been paid £5,000 for his captaincy and two years later he received around £11,000 as his share of the prize-money for the capture of Dutch East Indiamen in 1795.119 The information is not available to assess accurately the amount of money Captain John Lloyd accumulated while employed between 1766–1796 in the maritime service of the East India Company. But if account is taken of the likely 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 75

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 75 profit made on the voyages of 1791–2 and 1794–5, the sale of his position as captain and the prize money in 1798, he probably amassed a fortune closer to 1 1 £3 to £3 ⁄2 million in current value than the earlier estimate of £2 to £2 ⁄2 million given in Brycheiniog XXXIV. However, the declaration of war between France and Britain in 1793 ushered in a period of rapid inflation that would have considerably reduced the value of that part of his fortune not invested in land, other property or commercial developments.

KEN JONES 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 76

76 Brycheiniog APPENDIX

Textiles mentioned in Private Trade & Purserage Documents of Captain John Lloyd 1791–1792 (Brecknock Museum / John Lloyd Documents – BM/JLD/A-H)

Rang doreas Mixed cotton and silk. Bengal, Malda-Kasimbazar area. Fine to superfine quality. Fashion wear and re-export trade.

Alliballies Mixed cotton and silk, Bengal, Malda-Kasimbazar area. Medium to superior quality. Fashion wear and re-export trade.

Bandanoes Silk ‘handkerchief’, dyed in the thread. Bengal, Kasimbazar. Superior to fine quality. Fashion wear and re-export trade.

Pullicate Silk Romals (sometimes called Roomauls) From Pulicat near Madras – Romals, ‘handkerchief’. South India. Medium quality. 0.75 yard square. Clothing and re-export trade.

Tanjebs Plain white muslin. Bengal, Dacca district. Fine quality. Fashion wear and re- export trade.

Jamdanna Brocaded with white or coloured silk. Bengal, Dacca district. Luxury quality. Fashion wear.

Jamawars Silk brocade. Bengal, Kasimbazar. Luxury quality. 10-18 yards long, 0.75 yard wide. Fashion wear.

Salampores Plain white and dyed muslin. Malabar coast. Medium quality. Block printing in England and re-export trade.

Susan North of the Textile and Fashion Department of the Victoria and Albert Museum, has provided information which has enabled the cost of enough good quality printed cotton, or a mixture of silk and cotton, from India, to make an afternoon gown for a lady of the ‘middling sort,’ to be around 2 guineas or around £170 in 2005. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 77

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 77 A NOTE ABOUT SOURCES The letters and other documents found at Abercynrig by Richard Lloyd provide most of the primary source material used in this article. The intention is to place the letters in the Sir John Lloyd archive in the Brecknock Museum and Art Gallery. Copies of the documents regarding Captain Lloyd’s private trade will be given to the National Library of Wales and Powys Archives as well as to the Brecknock Museum and Art Gallery. I am most grateful to Richard Lloyd for making this valuable material available. The additional primary source information has, in the main, come from the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library where, once again, I received considerable help from Hedley Sutton, the manager of that reading room, and his staff. Jean Sutton, the author of Lords of the East, a standard work on the maritime service of the English East India Company and Dr Huw Bowen, a leading authority on the EIC, have been generous with their advice and corrected many errors in the drafts of this article. Ruth Bidgood has once again shared her unrivalled knowledge of life in northwest Breconshire in the eighteenth century. I should also like to thank Sister Bonaventure who helped me to transcribe all the letters found at Abercynrig. Finally, Edward Parry has not only performed his editorial role with his usual skill but has been very patient in waiting for the final version of the article.

NOTES

1 Jones, K., ‘John Lloyd an Adventurous Welshman’, Brycheiniog, Vols. XXXIII, XXXIV, Kelleher, B., & Jones., K., ‘Captain John Lloyd – A Research Note’, Brycheiniog, Vol. XXXV. 2 Some of the words were unable to be deciphered and no attempt has been made to alter the original spelling or correct the wayward punctuation. 3 BM/JLD/2. 4 BM/JLD/3. 5 BM/JLD/4 It is not known what is the meaning or significance of the phrase, ‘I am well with my Duty’. 6 BM/JLD/5. 7 BM/JLD/8. 8 BM/JLD/9. 9 BM/JLD/11. 10 BM/JLD/12. 11 BM/JLD/13. 12 Williams, H., Stage Coaches in Wales, Stewart Williams, Barry, 1977. 13 BM/JLD/15. 14 BM/JLD/19. 15 BM/JLD/22 A ‘plain’ square piano would not have had flowers painted on the name board. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 78

78 Brycheiniog

16 In this article the 2005 equivalent is sometimes placed in a bracket after the original figure. The multipliers used to calculate the change in the value of money between approximately 1790 and 2005 are derived from the website, http://www.ex.ac.uk/~RDavies/arian/current.howmuch.html ‘How much is that worth today?’. Another useful source of financial multipliers is the House of Commons Library 1991 Research Paper 99/20, ‘Inflation the Value of the Pound 1750–1815’ which can be accessed through the same website. During the 70 year’s of Lloyd’s life (1748–1818) the value of money halved because of inflation, which was particularly marked during the wars with France from 1793–1815. It should be noted that all price multipliers are approximate because of changing expenditure patterns, the development of new products, changes in the quality of products and the questionable accuracy and relevance of statistical data in the eighteenth century and nineteenth centuries. 17 BM/JLD/22. 18 BM/JLD/31. 19 BM/JLD/31. 20 Picard, L., Dr. Johnson’s London, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, London, 2000. 21 BM/JLD/28. 22 BM/JLD/39. 23 BM/JLD/40. 24 BM/JLD/4. 25 BM/JLD24. 26 Wooding, D. L. Notebooks, National Library of Wales, Facs 631, para. 114. 27 BM/JLD18. 28 BM/JLD/40. 29 BM/JLD/1. 30 BM/JLD/3. 31 BM/JLD/6. 32 Information provided by the curators of the 12th, 23rd and 27th Regiments of Foot. 33 Jones, T., History of Breconshire, vol. II, 1809, pp.190, 192, 197. So far it has not been possible to find in the India and Oriental Collection of the British Library, which has detailed information regarding the British officers in the army of the East India Company, any reference to Peter Chabert in the 108th Regiment of Foot. 34 Jones, ibid, vol. II. P.198, 1909. 35 BM/JLD/19. 36 BM/JLD/24. 37 BM/JLD/26. 38 The mortality rate of servants of the East India Company in India was very high. Of the 28 Writers (the most junior grade of merchant) who went to India in 1762, 17 had died by 1772. Other studies have shown that during the first three years in India the mortality rate from disease and illnesses, often resulting from drinking, could be as high as 50%. 39 OIOC/L/MAR/B/363C. 40 BM.JLD/37. 41 BM/JLD/39. 42 Volume II, p.75. 43 NLW/SD/Z/B9. 44 BM/JLD/27. 45 BM/JLD/27a. 46 PRO PROB/11/1129, Jones ibid, 1809, p. 65 states that the Hay’s monument is attached to the wall in the nave of the Priory church close to the Havard Chapel but it has not been possible to locate it. 47 op.cit. 1809 vol.II p.63. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 79

The Personal Life and Private Trade of Captain John Lloyd 79 48 BM/JLD/23. 49 BM/JLD/24. 50 BM/JLD/26. 51 BM/JLD/27. 52 BM/JLD/30. 53 Byng, J., The Torrington Diaries, ed. John Beresford, 1934. 54 BM/JLD/31. 55 BM/JLD/2. 56 BM/JLD/11. 57 BM/JLD/12. 58 BM/JLD/16. 59 BM/JLD/31. 60 BM/JLD/17. 61 BM/JLD/18. 62 BM/JLD/29. 63 Linard, W., Welsh Woods and Forests, Gomer, 2000 pp133-6. 64 Lloyd, J., Historical Memoranda of Breconshire, 1904, vol., p.19. 65 BM/JLD/22. 66 BM/JLD/25. 67 BM/JLD/13. 68 BM/JLD/24. 69 BM/JLD/26. 70 BM/JLD/27. 71 BM/JLD/28. 72 BM/JLD/29. 73 BM/JLD/30. 74 BM/JLD/31. 75 OIOC/L/MAR/B363C. 76 BM/JLD/34. 77 BM/JLD/32. 78 BM/JLD/10. 79 BM/JLD/11. 80 BM/JLD/13. 81 BM/JLD/36. NLW/Maybery papers 4560. Jones, T., History of Breconshire, 1907, Vol. II, p.122. NLW/DER(Dinas Estate Records) P 2/4–25. Lewis, W.J. Lead Mining in Wales. BM/JLD/31. 82 NLW/Maybery papers 4560. 83 Jones, T., History of Breconshire, 1907, Vol. II, p.122. 84 NLW/DER(Dinas Estate Records) P 2/4–25. 85 Lewis, W.J. Lead Mining in Wales. 86 BM/JLD/31. 87 BM/JLD/44. 88 BM/JLD/47. 89 James Lowe became the manager or agent for John Probert of Shrewsbury who was employed by Lord Powis, the son of Robert Clive of India and also a senior figure in the English East India Company, which was a lucrative market for lead. Members of the Welsh Mines Preservation Trust have provided this information. 90 BM/JLD/53. 91 BM/JLD/54. 92 BM/JLD/40. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 80

80 Brycheiniog

93 BM/JLD/49. 94 BM/JLD/48. 95 Eastwick, Capt., A., Master Mariner, (1890) ed. H. Compton. 96 NLW. P/2/7/4-9. 97 BM/JLD/1. 98 Jones, K., ibid, vol. XXXIII, pp. 84-86. 99 BM/JLD/7. It should be noted that in the 1930 volume IV of the Glanusk edition of Theophilus Jones’s, History of Breconshire, it is stated that Parsons was an army officer at the time of his marriage. This is one of the 5 factual errors regarding the Lloyd family on pages 180–1 in volume IV. There is no record of Margaret Lloyd marrying Henry Parsons in Brecon so it is probable that the Newgate Street mentioned was in London not in Brecon. 100 In the case of a ‘respondentia’ bond a supplier would provide a commodity which the captain would agree to ship to the East. The captain would specify a sum that he would pay to the supplier, or one of his associates in Asia, following the sale of the commodity. Anything earned above the agreed price would be profit to the commander. If the commodity could not be sold for the agreed price it would be returned to the supplier on a ‘sale or return’ basis. (Definition provided by Dr. Huw Bowen). 101 BM/JLD/9 Jones and Davies of Presteigne may have been a local bank but there is no record in Presteigne of a bank with this name. John Woodhouse (1716–1792) of Yatton Court, Hereford was a Director of the EIC, 1768–71, 1773–76, 1778–81, 1784–86, and 1788–1791. 102 BM/JLD/11. 103 BM/JLD/16. 104 BM/JLD/17 ‘Madras and Bengal’ was regarded as a ‘good voyage’ but not as profitable as, ‘Bombay and China’. The captains and crew of the first ships to reach their destination had a considerable advantage over the late ships with regard to selling their private trade. 105 OIOC L/MAR/C/655 p.119. 106 BM/JLD/A-H contain details of all the existing information regarding Captain Lloyd’s outward and homeward trade for his 1791–2 voyage to India. These documents were also found at Abercynrig by Richard Lloyd and because of their rarity were given by him to the Oriental and India Office Collection of the British Library. Copies of the documents were made for the Brecknock Museum and Art Gallery, Powys Archives and the National Library of Wales. 107 Cumming, E., The Earl of Abergavenny, CD ISBN 0-9542104:2002. 108 William Wordsworth wrote two poems in 1805 regarding the death of his brother, ‘Elegiac Verses in Memory of My Brother John Wordsworth’ and ‘To the Daisy.’ 109 BM.JLD/A. 110 OIOC/L/MAR/B 363/D. 111 BM/JLD/C. 112 BM/JLD/D-H. 113 The Sicca Rupee contained 176 grammes of pure silver and was used in Bengal. The conversion rate to sterling in the late eighteenth century was 1 Sicca Rupee = 27d. Pagodas were used in most of South India. Towards the end of the eighteenth century the Star Pagoda was worth 8 shillings and the Gold Star Pagoda 8s-9d. 114 Parkinson, C.N., Trade in Eastern Seas, 1937, p. 205. 115 BM/JLD/13. 116 BM/JLD/37. 117 NLW/Dinas Estate Records/ M/10/4. 118 NLW Dinas Estate Records P/3/11. 119 Jones, K., Brycheiniog, XXXIV, p.113. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 81

THE CRISIS OF ANGLICANISM IN MID-C19 BRECON

The history of religion in Wales during the past five hundred years poses large and difficult questions for historians. The catholicism of the late medieval period succumbed rapidly to the forces of protestantism and in the years before the Civil Wars Wales was regarded as one of the most devoutly Anglican parts of the kingdom. This was reflected in the support given to the Royalist cause and the strenuous efforts of Puritan governments to lighten the darkness of the principality. A hundred years later Wales was at the centre of that explosion of nonconformity which undid Anglican dominance; move forward to 1851 and Wales is revealed as overwhelmingly a chapel-going country. Today the chapels are fighting for survival and many are losing the battle; all over Wales there are shops, houses, arts centres and even pubs and bars occupying those citadels of nonconformity which for many people were synonymous with Welshness. This article concentrates on one brief period in this shifting pattern of religious allegiances – the years just before and after 1851 – and examines the example of Brecon and how Anglicans and nonconformists vied for spiritual leadership. The only official religious census in Britain’s history was compiled in 1851 and the results were published three years later.1 Depending on their religious affiliations people were astonished, shocked or delighted by what the census revealed. It was clear that alongside the industrial revolution, which was celebrated in 1851 in the Great Exhibition, Britain had experienced a religious revolution in the past hundred years. A sizeable minority of the population attended no place of worship and of the majority who did, nearly half went to nonconformist chapels or catholic churches. In Wales nonconformists outnumbered Anglicans by four to one. The Established church still enjoyed considerable legal, social and economic advantages but the census showed that its spiritual dominance had ended. The main causes of this transformation were threefold. Industrial and agricultural changes had radically altered the economy and society of Britain since 1750. Second there was a ferment of new ideas which challenged deference and the old political system; the influence of the French revolution is hard to exaggerate.2 The third cause was the state of the Anglican church whose organisation was laid down in the hierarchical, rural society of medieval Britain; it was ill-equipped to deal with this new world of machines, factories and industrial cities. The abuses and weaknesses of the Anglican church noted by Erasmus Saunders in his pamphlet of 1721 persisted into the early nineteenth century.3 Nepotism and pluralism could be found everywhere. Two very different examples will serve to illustrate these problems. When in 1802 Nelson visited Brecon during his triumphal tour of south Wales, few of his local admirers knew 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 82

82 Brycheiniog how much of time was spent – not in fighting the French – but dealing with the importunate letters of his older brother the Rev. William Nelson who sought preferment with undisguised greed. For example in 1801 the cleric wrote ‘I am told, there are two very old lives, prebends of Canterbury, in the minister’s gift – near six hundred a year and good houses’; he went on to list six dioceses where the deans were elderly and into whose shoes he would willingly step.4 At the local level the diary of another military man, Captain Frederick Jones, provides vivid comments on the same issues. Jones had been educated at Wesley’s school at Kingswood near Bath and had nonconformist friends though he was an Anglican. In May 1804 he recorded that ‘Williams of Ystraed Meiric [sic] read himself in[at his induction] to the church at Nantmel!!!’5 Jones’s indignation stemmed from the other posts that Williams already occupied; he was headmaster of the Grammar school at Ystrad Meurig (near Tregaron), a prebend of Christ College, Brecon and also held a rectory and four curacies. Captain Jones was therefore not surprised soon to hear complaints from the parishioners of Nantmel (north of Llandrindod Wells) against their vicar; fortunately their curate was very reliable and much liked. Too many of the senior Anglican clergy, including the bishops, in Wales seemed remote to their parishioners. The Vicar and Archdeacon of Brecon for the first half of the nineteenth century – Richard Davies – is one such example.6 His background was typical of the higher clergy of the Anglican church of the time; he inherited the living – members of the family served as vicars for nearly a century and half between 1720 and Richard Davies’s death in 1859 – and he married into a local gentry family, the Williamses of Penpont and Abercamlais. Davies’s income as a canon of St David’s and Vicar of Brecon was considerable – over £1500 a year. He was a Tory in politics. He claimed to have enough Welsh to fulfil his role as a magistrate but while he was vicar services in Welsh were discontinued at the town’s two churches.This is not to gainsay the efforts he made to improve the lot of his parishioners; he founded the Brecon Benevolent Schools in 1809 and he made substantial contributions to the restoration of St Mary’s and to local relief funds in times of hardship. In his latter years Davies displayed signs of odd behaviour which generous commentators described as eccentricity; some of the congregation at St Mary’s refused to attend services he conducted. A few miles to the east a very different character exhibited another face of contemporary Anglicanism. Thomas Price – better known by his bardic name, Carnhuanawc, was Vicar of Llanfihangel Cwm-du from 1825 to 1848.7 The lay patron of the living the Revd Lord William Somerset, pocketed £396 of the revenues of the parish leaving the incumbent £191 a year; this was considerably more than the wages of most of his parishioners but the heavy hand of lay patronage was one of the main problems which affected the independence of the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 83

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 83 State church, in both England and Wales. Price was an ardent defender of the Welsh language and urged the Anglican church to recognise its importance; he argued that the nonconformists were winning converts because they held services in Welsh. He castigated Englishmen who held Welsh sees for their arrogant shortsighted attitudes – those ‘Anglo-Welsh bishops who fatten on the dioceses of the aboriginal Britons.’ While the Anglican church as an institution was slow to respond to the new society, Nonconformists seized the opportunities. Their populist approach encouraged the participation of lay people and their flexible organisation meant that chapels were built wherever the need arose. Hundreds of thousands of new members filled the chapels which soon had to be rebuilt or extended to cope with the influx.8 We have to wait until 1851 for the religious census which revealed the full extent of nonconformist inroads but long before that it was clear to anyone who travelled through Britain that chapel-building on a huge scale was under way. The townscape of provincial centres such as Brecon was changed significantly between 1770 and 1851 by nonconformists. The history of chapel building in Brecon is a complicated subject but the following outline indicates the main stages in the story.9 The earliest chapel in the town, built at the end of the seventeenth century, was on the site of the present Plough chapel named after the inn which had once stood there. But it was not until the second half of the eighteenth century that the emerging methodists added to the stock of nonconformist chapels. When John Wesley first came to Brecon he used the Guildhall but in 1763 when it was unavailable ‘I preached at Mr James’s door’.10 It is likely that the first methodist society in the town met at Thomas James’s house and then later at William Gilbert’s home.11 In 1771 a chapel was built on land between Free Street and Little Free Street, part of the orchard belonging to Gilbert. In 1780 Lady Huntingdon paid for a chapel in the Struet, opposite Priory Hill for the use of Welsh Calvinistic Methodists. Both of the above congregations moved into new, larger premises in the nineteenth century: the Wesleyans into the Coke chapel in Lion Street in 1835 and the Calvinistic Methodists built Bethel chapel in Lion Yard in 1852. The first thirty years of the nineteenth century saw a surge in local chapel building. The Welsh Baptists built at the Watergate in 1806; further down the road their English colleagues erected Kensington in 1824. In the same year another Wesleyan chapel was built in the Struet opposite the George inn and ten years later the Independents built their chapel in Glamorgan Street. The year of the religious census coincided with the opening a the new Catholic church in Glamorgan street. In the second half of the century the pace slackened but the English Methodists built a new chapel at the head of the Watton in 1867 and four years later a small chapel in Walnut Square, Llanfaes, replaced the Tabernacle which had been sold in 1870. It is not surprising given this expansion 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 84

84 Brycheiniog of nonconformity that Brecon was chosen as the site for a college to train men for the ministry. The Congregational College opened in 1839 in St Mary’s street and then moved in 1869 to imposing Gothic premises on Camden Road.12 The inner core of the old medieval town whose skyline was still dominated by the great tower of St Mary’s church was otherwise notable for the impressive chapels – three in Lion Street alone – which testified to nonconformist confidence. Seating in the chapels increased by a remarkable 343% in the first half of the nineteenth century whereas the population rose by only 90%; the response of the Established church lagged far behind the demographic challenge and this was a significant reason for the success of nonconformity. However it was not as if the Church and the government had done nothing to meet the needs of the new society emerging in the first half of the century. The building programmes inaugurated by the Church Building Act of 1818 and by the Incorporated Church Building Society, as well as the efforts of individual benefactors, produced impressive results; over eight million pounds was spent between 1818 and 1856 and more than 2000 churches were built in the third and fourth decades of the century.13 But the progress of new building or restoration in Breconshire was fitful. Between 1829 and 1837 restoration work – some involving major rebuilding – was done on seven churches in the county; thereafter there was a lull until the late 1850s.14 The restoration of Brecon’s three parish churches and of Christ College begun in 1856 was an important step in the Anglican counter-attack to the advance of nonconformity, but by then the damage had been done – the inroads on the state church’s monopoly might be checked but not reversed. In Brecon the local Anglican establishment did not have to wait for the results of the 1851 census to appreciate the scale of the threat to the Anglican church. The Rev. Thomas Williams,who had been in charge of the school at Christ College since 1807, pointed out in 1844 that within the past 15 years seven new or rebuilt chapels had appeared in Brecon as well as a college for the education of Independent ministers; he meanwhile was presiding over the terminal decline of the collegiate foundation.15 Williams reinforced his arguments that something must done – and soon – by suggesting that ‘the recent “Rebecca” disturbances’ were the fruits of ‘the rapid strides of dissent in the Principality’. It was obvious to everyone that the state of the churches in the town compared badly with the modern chapels. This point had been made forcibly by William North the curate of St John’s in 1836; ‘I need not add that the Dissenting Chapels now comfortably, nay elegantly fitted easily allure away the unstable from a place where they with reason say they meet with discomfort and dangers’.16 The parish church in Llanfaes, St David’s, was in such poor condition that a proposal was put to the Ecclesiastical Commissioners in 1850 for the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 85

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 85 abandonment of the church and its replacement by a restored Christ College chapel to serve as the parish church. Not only was Llanfaes church ‘ruinous’ and damp, the tower was in a particularly bad condition; also ‘it [the church] does not possess any architectural merit, being much disfigured by the insertion of unsightly Sash Windows’. The building was too small for the congregation but rebuilding or extending on the present site would be difficult not least because ‘in one angle [of the churchyard] is situated a Turnpike gate Toll House’.17 Also in Llanfaes was the decaying chapel and associated buildings of the College of Christ, Brecknock, founded by royal charter in 1541 on the site of the former Dominican friary. From its earliest days the college struggled to maintain the medieval buildings – the prebendal foundation and endowments never realised sufficient income for the purpose. However until the early nineteenth century the college provided a good education for generations of local pupils and indeed under the leadership of David Griffith – headmaster from 1758 to 1801 – it experienced something of a golden age. But decline set in and by the 1830s the number of pupils had dwindled to a handful; some people blamed the new foundation of St David’s college, Lampeter. Throughout the 1840s the minutes of the Common Council of the borough record the burgesses’ concern about Christ College.18 On August 21st 1840 they voted that a memorandum be presented to the bishop of St David’s ‘on the subject of Christ’s College and School’. A year later the council had heard nothing and it was resolved that one of them should call on the bishop when he was in London. In the same year ‘memorials’ from the inhabitants of Brecon were sent to the bishop. By 1845 the Council had broadened its campaign and approached the Ecclesiastical Commissioners as well as sending petitions to the House of Lords (via Lord Camden) and the Commons by local MPs. The Council received no assurances from the Commisioners and so in 1847 the mayor, aldermen and councillors sent them a petition in which they rehearsed the history of the college and among the arguments put forward for its restitution was that in Wales ‘where the population is rapidly increasing . . . a remarkable deficiency exists in the means of educating the middle Classes.’19 In July 1845 an anonymous letter – signed ‘Ecclesiasticus’ – reached the Church Commissioners in London; the writer lamented the ruinous state of the college chapel – ‘this venerable and sacred temple’ – which was a reproach to the town of Brecon and – what was worse – excited ‘the Sneers and Contempt of Dissenters’.20 Later in the same year John Meadows White, a well-known lawyer of Lincoln’s Inn who specialised in church matters, called at Brecon on his way back to London after a visit to south Wales. He was distressed by what he found at the college. He wrote a long letter to the Commissioners detailing the state of the fabric and the failure of the prebendal system to safeguard the institution. The church ‘is in such a distressing and degraded state of dilapidation and the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 86

86 Brycheiniog original purposes of the foundation seem to be so completely lost sight of, that I lose no time in calling your attention to it.’21 A subscription among the local gentry had raised money to repair the walls and roof, but for that the chapel would have been a ‘complete ruin’. As it was the interior was ‘more like a dilapidated barn than a church’ and there were sheep sheltering inside; several monuments were defaced and broken. The prebendaries ‘are all non-resident, [and] they are all apparently liable to maintain and sustain the fabric and to cary out the objects of the foundation – they have all apparently neglected it’. White drew attention to two further consequences of this situation. The ‘vast numbers of dissenters in and about Brecon who of course take such an occasion of neglect as one which justifies their hostility to the Church’. Second, the failure of the church authorities to address the problem at the college means that ‘the inhabitants of Brecon are greatly dissatisfied with this abuse of the endowment’. Unless the Commissioners act swiftly the matter will be raised by influential local people ‘and this will result in embarrassment for the Church.’ Among such worthies he identified Col. Thomas Wood M.P. and the marquis of Camden. In fact as the minutes of the Common Council show he was too late and their concerns had already been communicated to both houses of parliament. White’s dismal picture of the college was no exaggeration. A year later the Rev. Jermyn Pratt – one of the Camden family – echoed his criticisms. Of the chapel he wrote, ‘nothing can exceed the filthy state of this sacred edifice. The roof even now scarcely resists the rain.’22 John Lloyd of Dinas put his description of the chapel into verse:

But the sacred Building, lo! Sure of late some heathen foe, Or Rebecca’s self, confound her, Has pepper’d it with a six pounder;

The mention of Rebecca again is interesting; her activities in sout-west Wales had left a deep impression on the land-owning classes but to suggest she and her followers had access to artillery is extravagant. Some of the eminent bishops of St David’s buried in the chapel would be devastated to see it in its ruinous condition:

Bull and Lucy, it had been Trial sore, had you foreseen In what poor dishonour’d case Soon would be your resting place.23

There are visual sources which complement these reports of the state of the college.The drawing of 1804, better known from an engraving of 1813, shows 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 87

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 87 vegetation encroaching on the building and the roof is clearly in a parlous condition. By 1851 pressure on the Church to take action was growing; Sir Benjamin Hall, wrote an open letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury – Respecting the State and Conditions of the Collegeiate Church of Brecon – and he arranged for his agent, William Llewellin, to visit the site and draw a plan of the buildings and to describe their present use.24 The medieval halls to the south of the chapel were divided and used as a ‘skin house’ with a ‘skin yard adjacent’; part was a dwelling. Nearby was a ‘beast house’ a ‘convenience’ and a ‘filthy open drain’. The schoolroom which had been built in 1806 to accommodate eighty pupils had a slaughter house on one side and pigsties on the other. (Plate 1) Christ college was a special case – a collegiate body whose finances had been a source of controversy since its foundation – and it was to require a particular act of parliament to remedy the problem; however the state of the two churches in the town offered little comfort to Anglicans facing the rising tide of nonconformity. Before the dissolution of the monasteries inhabitants of some towns had used part of the monastic church as their place of worship; after 1540 they were faced with the prospect of taking over conventual buildings which were often too big for their purposes. The Benedictine priory at Brecon had a great medieval church – as befitted a daughter house of Battle abbey in Sussex – which had been enlarged and beautified by a succession of marcher lords. However the townspeople could not match the resources of either the Benedictine order or families like the Bohuns and Staffords. (The same problem faced the parishioners at Abbey Dore in Herefordshire and at Abergavenny; in both cases the monastic buildings have largely disappeared.) Until the second half of the nineteenth century the parishioners faced a chronic problem in meeting the costs of maintaining their large church. In 1698 Hugh Thomas wrote of the ‘sumptuous and stately’ building but warned that ‘its decays increasingly I fear will be its Fall’.25 Margaret Walker has described the efforts made by the churchwardens to avert Thomas’s prediction. However ‘the limited sums of money at their disposal made large scale projects impossible, and they were constantly fighting a battle against the elements and the subsequent deterioration of the structure.’ 26 Despite their endeavours visitors were not impressed by what they saw; in 1787 John Byng wrote that, ‘the inside of the church is a filthy display of Welsh dirt – pews falling down – and every part like an hog’s stye!’27 Half a century later the curate who served St John’s remarked that, ‘The Priory Church at Brecon has been from time immemorial in a state utterly inadequate for the purposes of Divine Worship’. He did not deny its magnificence but ‘its extreme dampness & cold state’ endangered the health of ‘the few venturesome persons’ who attend services. He also lamented the appalling acoustics which made sermons inaudible to all but those in ‘the few pews in the neighbourhood of the pulpit’.28 This at a time when the ‘preaching 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 88

88 Brycheiniog

Plate 1 Plan of Christ College made in 1851 for Sir Benjamin Hall and published in his ‘Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury etc’. (Reproduced with the permission of the National Library of Wales.) 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 89

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 89 boxes’ built by the nonconformists magnified the words declaimed from their pulpits. In an attempt to address some of these problems a screen – designed by Thomas Henry Wyatt – was built across the east end of the nave; a new heating system was also installed, the seating was rearranged in the nave which was now in effect the main church. Architects and historians who visited the church in the mid-nineteenth century (including John Parker, Edward Freeman and Gilbert Scott) were most impressed by the building but also concerned that immediate restoration work was essential. In his report to the committee overseeing the first stage of the restoration, Scott remarked on the sad comparison between the grandeur of the church – ‘work of a high order of architectural merit’ – and ‘the present condition of the interior of this noble structure [which] is melancholy in the extreme.’ The chancel, ‘the most beautiful half of the church . . . is left in a state of deplorable desolation.’29 The fourth Anglican church in Brecon was St Mary’s at the very heart of the town. This was a chapel dependent on the priory church but by the later eighteenth century it had become the fashionable place of worship. However it was – with the glorious exception of the tower – not a building of much architectural distinction. But what concerned the Church in the early nineteenth century was securing the fabric and increasing the number of seats available. In 1815 a scheme for a major rebuilding of St Mary’s was discussed by the borough council.30 Two schemes were put forward. The first was for the building a new gallery,‘at an Expence not exceeding One Thousand Pounds to be advanced by The Reverend Archdeacon Davies who hath proposed to lend the same’; the gallery would provide ‘free Accommodation for the poor Inhabitants’. Money was also to be raised for repairs to the roof. A month later in March a much more radical solution was being discussed – the ‘Taking down and rebuilding Saint Mary’s church’ at a cost of £4,700. Subscriptions totalling over £1000 were promised and the Archdeacon hoped to raise another thousand pounds by publishing four volumes of his sermons and tracts at two guineas the set. But by the middle of the century no solution had been found and complaints about the inadequacy of the building gathered strength. In 1847 the Rev. Thomas Williams claimed that the provision of pews in the church was insufficient as most were in private hands.31 When Edward Freeman visited Brecon in 1854 he made some rather tart remarks on the proposals to replace the existing church; ‘a design for a new St Mary’s being exhibited in a temporary museum.’32 Just before the religious census was taken in 1851 it was clear that the local Anglicans were deeply concerned about their situation: the churches did not provide enough space for worshippers and the discomfort endured by congregations meant that extensive alterations and improvements were essential. All this was exacerbated by the successes of the nonconformists in attracting large 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 90

90 Brycheiniog congregations to their commodious, comfortable new chapels. Thomas Williams claimed that the chapels in Brecon were supported principally by members of the established church even though not many of them were chapel communicants.33 Anglican fears were heightened by the opening of a new Catholic church – just across the Usk from the ruinous Christ College – in the very year of the census. But was this gloomy picture really borne out by the facts? After all, the dire state of the Anglican church had been a constant refrain of critics since the early eighteenth century. John Meadows White decided that before decisions were made to embark on an expensive rebuilding or restoration progamme it would be sensible to establish the facts about church and chapel attendance: ‘this point requires investigation, as on it may depend the expediency or necessity of any restoration [of Christ college] at all’.34 He therefore conducted his own local census, four years before the government did so. White, now described as ‘Solicitor to the Ecclessiastical Commissioners’ compiled A Schedule of Places of Worship in Brecon and sent it to C.K. Murray, Secretary to the Commissioners.35 He took the population figures for the three parishes of the town from the census of 1841 which gave a total of 7,816. The three churches could hold 2000 worshippers but the average Sunday attendance was just less than half of that figure. The dissenters, including catholics, offered places for 3,520 people and the average attendance was 1,920. The comparisons between the numbers of communicants and those attending Sunday schools at the Anglican and non-Anglican churches was even more heavily weighted against the former. All White’s figures of attendance are rounded up (or down) and appear as hundreds or multiples of ten, but as this applies to all denominations there is no reason to doubt the relative accuracy of the figures. According to White his statistics ‘were supplied to me by a trustworthy person who had good opportunities of access to authentic sources’. His results showed that nonconformists outnumbered Anglicans by just over 2:1. The official figures released in 1854 suggest the ratio was approximately 1.5:1. Was White – or his source – inflating the nonconformist threat in order to shock the Commissioners into action? The national census asked clergy and ministers to record the numbers who attended all the services and Sunday schools on March 30th 1851.36 Taking the totals i.e. all those attending each of services on Sunday and including ‘scholars’, the Anglicans mustered 2,531 attendances whereas the nonconformists (excluding catholics) counted 3,647. Both groups returned much higher figures than those calculated by Meadows White in 1847 which reinforces the suspicion that the ‘turnout’ was stimulated by anxious or enthusiastic clerics who enjoined their congregations to display particular diligence on March 30th 1851.37 Whatever problems there are interpreting the figures from 1847 and 1851 the overall impression they give is of a state church unable to meet the needs of the 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 91

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 91 local population and of thriving nonconformist sects eager to attract worshippers. It is important to put these figures for Brecon into a wider perspective. The geography of the census figures indicates significant variations in the distribution of the various nonconformist denominations as well as showing the importance of the linguistic boundary between Welsh and English speakers in determining religious adherence.38 For the governing classes of England and Wales – until recently Anglicans by legal prescription – two unpalatable conclusions had to be faced. First a sizeable minority of the population, some five and a quarter million, attended no place of worship. Lord John Russell was Prime Minister when the census was taken and the year before, in a debate on measures to curb the slave trade on the African coast, he spoke of ‘the Christian character of this nation [which] is the main source and secret of its strength’.39 Such a claim was now less convincing. Even more alarming was that the State church, buttressed by a near monopoly of access to offices of power and influence, was being deserted by millions of Her Majesty’s subjects. In Wales more than four times as many dissenters as Anglicans were counted on census Sunday; for Brecon the ratio of dissenters to Anglicans was approximately 3:2. However the town was not typical of Wales in that it was a provincial centre where numerous Anglican clergy and gentry exercised considerable influence. What was done in Brecon in response to the warnings of White and many others and in the light of the census results, to confront the crisis facing the Anglican church? Between 1856 and 1862 the pace of church restoration in Brecon could be described as frenetic. In this brief period thousands of pounds were raised – largely by public subscription – and spent on building projects which resulted in the dramatic improvement of all three parish churches. During the same period Christ College was refounded as a public school and new buildings were under construction; the college chapel was rebuilt shortly afterwards. A second restoration programme was begun in 1872 to complete the work on St John’s church. The first of the three churches to be repaired and improved was St Mary’s. At a public meeting in the Town Hall (the Guildhall) on June 19th 1856 it was resolved that ‘the fabric of St Mary’s Church demands immediate attention & that increased accommodation is urgently required to meet the demands of the Parishioners’.40 A committee was elected which included names soon to become familiar in the story of Anglican revival in the town: Colonel Pearce, William de Winton, John Powell, Walter Maybery, Dr Lucas, and J. R. Cobb headed the list. By the end of July subscriptions of £2100 had been promised and the Society for the Promoting the Enlargement, Building & Repairing of Churches had made a grant of £300. Sums of £100 or more were subscribed by the Bishop, Sir Joseph Bailey, Walter Maybery, Col. Lloyd Vaughan Watkins, Col. Pearce, Mrs Pearce and John Powell. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 92

92 Brycheiniog Architects were appointed – Messrs Habershon & Co. who were restoring the church at Llandefaelog Fach at the same time. Before work could start the buildings which adjoined the church were purchased so they could be demolished.41 Mr John Evans agreed ‘to take the rate of somewhat less than eleven years purchase for his three houses and the committee hoped that the Rev. Charles Griffiths would follow his example and ‘dispose of his House, Stable & Coach House abutting on the Church, at the same rate, so as to effect so great an improvement for the benefit of the inhabitants of his native town.’ Evans’s houses were on the High Street and Griffiths’s in Church Street; the accounts of the committee show that they received £300 and £180 respectively for their properties. The committee accepted the lowest of the eight tenders for the work, this was from Rees Price a local contractor. They were to regret the decision; by November 1856 the architect was denouncing Price as ‘obstinate & I fear unprincipled’. By March of the following year further disagreements with Price led the committee to order him to hand over the keys of the church either to Mr Habershon or to his Clerk of Works. New contractors had to be engaged and a court order obtained to prevent Price getting his hands on the Staffordshire tiles on the site which were ‘the property of the Committee’. Despite this hiccup the work was completed by October 1858 when the accounts were published; they showed that a total of £3280 had been raised by subscriptions, the proceeds of a bazaar and the collection at the reopening of the church. The contractors’ bills for the work on the church came to £1900; this involved reroofing the building including the tower and alterations to the interior. New encaustic tiles were laid, the pulpit and the reading desk were replaced and the organ – which had been removed to St John’s during the building work – was repaired at a cost of £99. In the following year attention focused on the church of St David in Llanfaes which was described in 1852 as ‘now in ruin and about being [sic] rebuilt’.42 But the restoration had to wait for seven years; in the meantime the bishop gave permission for marriages to be performed in the chapel of Christ College and some of the furniture from St David’s – including a stove and some pews – was moved to the college chapel. Freeman in his account of Brecon in1854 commented that ‘its temporary adaptation as the parish church of Llanfaes appears to have brought upon it an inroad of pews and an additional plaster ceiling.’43 Meetings of the vestry became peripatetic and were held at local inns including the Three Horse Shoes and the New Buck; in 1859 they met in the room adjoining the college chapel which no doubt was considered more appropriate than licensed premises. However while this was convenient in the spring and summer, the November meeting had to be adjourned from the college chapel ‘in consequence of the uncomfortable state of the vestry room, on account of the broken window and damp floor’ and so they moved to another pub, the Rose and Crown. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 93

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 93 In preparation for the work on the church the graveyard was extended. £157-10-0 was spent acquiring land, three-quarters of an acre of Cae Mawr belonging to Archdeacon Davies and a smaller plot from the vicar’s garden. Col. Pearce of Ffrwdgrech and John Lloyd of Dinas lent the necessary money. The new boundary wall was to be built using stones from the old parish church. The rebuilding of the church was completed in 1859 under the guidance of the Hereford architect John Clayton. The sum of just over £1500 was raised by subscriptions, collections and a grant of £102 from the Church Buildings Society. The most generous donors were Col. and Mrs Pearce of Ffrwdgrech; it is interesting that their contributions were listed separately and that Mrs Pearce gave £153 to her husband’s £100. (The Pearces contributed £663 towards the restoration of the three Brecon parish churches, making them the most significant patrons of the Anglican cause in the town.) Other significant subscribers were Archdeacon Davies, John Lloyd, the Governors of Christ College and the architect himself who offered £32-10-0. By early 1860 vestry meetings were held at St David’s either in the vestry room or the schoolroom. The following year more land was acquired to further enlarge the churchyard and in 1877 a proposal was passed to ‘enlarge the existing schoolroom attached to the church by the extension of the building and the erection of another floor, so as to provide sufficient accommodation for the Sunday School.’ Clearly the church was flourishing. However Clayton’s rebuilding did not last long and in 1923–5 the church was closed again and the vicar was seeking alternative premises; so once more marriages were solemnized in the chapel at Christ College and Sunday services took place in the ‘chapel attached to His Majesty’s Prison situate within the parish of St David’s’. No sooner was St David’s restored to its congregation than another public meeting was called, this time in the Shire Hall, for ‘taking into consideration means for the Restoration of part of the Priory Church’.45 This work was on a larger scale than at the other two churches and so it was undertaken in two stages, in 1860–62 and 1872. On both occasions the architect in charge was George Gilbert Scott one of the most influential Victorians who worked on many of the great cathedrals; he was supervising the restoration of Hereford at the same time he was employed at Brecon. (There is an nice symmetry in this as the two churches shared patrons and builders when they were enlarged and beautified in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.) Scott’s guiding principle was, he explained, that ‘the great object of restoration . . . is conservation’ and that ‘the less of new work we have to insert, the better.’ The only major exception to this was the construction of the stone vault in the chancel which the medieval builders had begun; Scott believed that without this work ‘half the beauty of the original design is lost.’45 The composition of the committee to oversee the fundraising and building 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 94

94 Brycheiniog work reflected the importance attached to the priory church. At the public meeting the bishop, Connop Thirlwall took the chair, alongside the Marquess of Camden, General Wood, Sir Thomas Phillips, Penry Williams of Penpont, Col. Pearce of Ffrwdgrech and other gentlemen and senior clergy. The committee that was appointed included many of the above as well as the High Sheriff, the Chairman of the Quarter Sessions, the MPs for borough and county, the Mayor and Aldermen and the Churchwradens of both St John’s and St Mary’s. This was clearly a campaign which engaged the local Anglican and political establishment. Lord Camden agreed to pay for the restoration of the chancel for which he was responsible as the lay impropriator, provided £2000 was raised to fund the work on the tower and the transepts. By March 1861 more than the required sum had been promised but only £677-16-6 was in the bank. However a meeting was arranged for April which Camden and Scott promised to attend ‘when the final arrangements [for starting the work] could be made’. Tenders were received from firms in, among other places, Peterborough, Cardiff and Brecon; James & Price of Cardiff submitted the lowest tender and this was accepted. A year later the work was completed; the total cost was £2693 of which the major item was the contractors’ bill for £2440 which was only £120 above their tender; Scott’s commission was £167-9-6 with an additional £62 paid to his Clerk of Works. The church was reopened on 23 April 1862. A Visitors’ Book was now placed in the church and people were encouraged to subscribe towards the next stage of the restoration.46 Visitors were informed that ‘To complete the Church, and to procure an Organ, which is greatly required for the proper rendering of the Musical portion of the Service about £5000 is required. Subscriptions will be thankfully received by the Vicar of Brecon.’ The book was ruled into three columns and visitors were asked to indicate whether they wished to give money for the fabric, fittings or the organ. Few visitors committed themselves to any of the funds but their entries show that Brecon attracted people from far and wide: in 1866 Thos. Maurice of Bombay (staying at the Castle Hotel), Roswell C. Williams of New York City signed the book alongside Sir Charles and Lady Isham of Lamport Hall in Northamptonshire. Despite the parsimony of visitors a meeting at the Shire Hall in 1872 decide that ‘it is desirable to complete the restoration of the Priory Church’ and that Gilbert Scott’s report be received and accepted, and so began the second major restoration. As if the extensive church rebuilding programme of the late 1850s and early 1860s was not impressive enough there was one further project which engaged the energies of Anglicans in Brecon – the rescue of Christ College from dilapidation and disuse. Pressure to remedy the situation came from many sources. The progress made by nonconformity in Brecon was obvious; just as 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 95

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 95 alarming was the completion of the new Catholic church on the opposite bank of the Usk, which ‘in the beauty of its design, and the care with which it has been executed’ contrasted sharply with ‘the neglected windows and dilapidated state of the Collegiate Church’.47 The rise of radical political movements in south Wales in the wake of industrialisation had frightened successive governments in London and the local magistrates. Insurrections in Merthyr and Newport and the widespread support accorded to Chartism in the valleys of south Wales were followed by the Rebecca riots which stretched the powers of the police and military to breaking point. The publication of the Blue Books, following a government inquiry into social conditions in Wales, highlighted the lack of schools and the pervasive influence of both nonconformity and radical ideas. What was needed was an education system which would inculcate respect for the Anglican church and the social hierarchy. This coincided with the movement to reform the old public schools in England; Thomas Arnold was Headmaster of Rugby between 1828 and 1842. His name was evoked by Basil Jones in an influential pamphlet of 1853; Arnold mourned the lack of natural beauty in the surroundings at Rugby which made his pupils less receptive to the classical poetry they were taught whereas Breconshire with its Beacons ‘the Sierra of South Wales’ had that ‘which Arnold pined for in Warwickshire’.49 Along with these religious, political and educational reasons for promoting the revival of the college there was the growing realisation that the historic buildings of England and Wales needed prompt attention if they were to be saved from further decay and eventual ruin. Well-connected travellers in Wales often wrote accounts of their journeys which helped to highlight the problem. Edward Augustus Freeman was one such visitor. In 1849 he published his History of Architecture and a few years later visited Brecon which came as a pleasant surprise and prompted him to write that ‘I know of no English town of the same size which presents greater attractions to the architectural admirer . . . the Priory Church . . . is, I imagine, unquestionably the third church in Wales, and it may even put in some claim to be considered as the second.’50 (Presumably he put the cathedrals at St David’s and Llandaff in first and second places, but his uncertainty about Llandaff may be because its restoration was still incomplete.) Effective lobbying by local dignitaries bore fruit in 1853 when an act of parliament gave the college a new constitution and two years later the administrative details were published. In 1859 a competition for the building of new school buildings was won by the Prichard and Seddon partnership and work began in June 1861; the buildings were opened three years later. However work on the chapel was delayed because of the shortage of funds – the school buildings as designed by Prichard & Seddon had to be modified for the same reason – and the Rev. J. D. Williams, the headmaster, was pushing for it to start. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 96

96 Brycheiniog A subscription fund had raised £550, of which the bishop contributed £100 and the headmaster £25; Lord Camden explained that he was deeply pledged to the work at the cathedral and could not contribute, Col. and Mrs Pearce do not appear on the list of subscribers perhaps feeling, with justification, that they had done enough in their support of the parish churches. The Ecclesiastical Commissioners refused to match the sum raised pound for pound, pointing out that they had helped to fund the school buildings. However funds were found and Seddon proceeded with the restoration and remodelling of the chapel. He gives an insight into what such work involved: ‘In restoring . . . the beautiful chancel . . . I laid its tottering N[orth] wall stone by stone on the turf and set it up again and might defy anyone to tell it had been touched.’51 The building, although altered later in the century, contains some quintessential Gothic Revival features, notable Seddon’s altar, the glass in the east window by Clayton & Bell and the tiles in the chancel made by William Godwin of Lugwardine to Seddon’s designs. In 1854 the Established church was shaken by the results of the Religious Census; in that year St David’s church was abandoned, the other two parish churches were inadequate to serve the town and Christ College was closed. In the middle of Brecon the impressive new Bethel chapel had just been opened. Within ten years the situation had altered dramatically. The three parish churches had been repaired and improved, the new school was about to open and the college chapel was being restored. The Anglican church can be accused of complacency and inaction in the first half of the nineteenth century but when it decided to meet the challenges of nonconformity and political discontent the speed and extent of its response was impressive. The history of religion in Brecon during the subsequent century and a half is beyond the scope of this article; clearly the main question which demands an answer is the decline of nonconformity from its commanding position in 1851 to its relative weakness today. The physical evidence for this great change is clear all over the modern town. Chapels have been demolished or altered to secular uses – the Coke chapel site is now the Co-op, Bethel is a Boots store; Lady Huntingdon’s chapel opposite Priory hill is a private house, the museum uses the old chapel in Glamorgan street, the photographer’s shop in the Struet was the Baptist chapel in the nineteenth century and so on. The churches whose condition caused Anglicans such distress in the 1850s are in good repair and still in use.

EDWARD PARRY 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 97

The Crisis of Anglicanism in mid-C19 Brecon 97 NOTES

1 Jones, I.G. and Williams, D. The Religious Census of 1851, Returns Relating to Wales, vol. 1 South Wales, (1976). 2 Porter, Roy Enlightenment, Britian and the Creation of the Modern World, (2000) is a stimulating summary of the main social, religious and intellectual changes which transformed Brtiain during the eighteenth century. 3 Parry, E.G. The Reverend Erasmus Saunders, The Journal of the Pembrokeshire Historical Society, 13, (2004). 4 Coleman, Terry Nelson, the man and the Legend (2001) p. 275. 5 Oliver R.C.B. The Dairy of Captain Frederick Jones, The Radnorshire Society Transactions, LX (1990) p. 47. 6 Brown, Roger L. ‘One of the most remarkable men of his time’ Richard Davies, Archdeacon of Brecon, 1777–1859, Brycheiniog, XXX1V, (2002). 7 Hughes, Herbert Thomas Price (Carnhuanawc), Cwm-Du, 1787–1848, ‘The Loveable Patriot’, Brycheinog, XXXIV, (2002). 8 Jones, Anthony Welsh Chapels (1984) is a brilliant short introduction to the history of chapel building in Wales. 9 Thomas W.S.K. Georgian and Victorian Brecon (1993), chapter 4 provides a useful summary of chapel building in the town. 10 Williams, A.H. John Wesley in Wales 1739–1790 (1971) p. 63. 11 Young, David The Origin and History of Methodism in Wales (1893) pp. 133–5. 12 Rees, Ivor Thomas Principal Joseph Jones 1877–1950, Brycheiniog, XXXV, (2003) pp. 119–120. 13 Morris, Richard Churches in the Landscape, (1989) chapter XI. 14 Jones, I.G. Church Reconstruction in Breconshire in the Nineteenth Century, Brycheiniog, X1X, (1980–81). 15 National Library of Wales (NLW), Welsh Church Commission (WCC), Brecon Collegiate Church(BCC) 1, 1678/44/2b (Hereafter BCC). 16 RCHM Wales, The Cathedral Church of St John the Evangelist Brecon, (1994) p. 20. 17 BCC 2, 758 1443/50. 18 Powys Archives Office, B/BR/100/3, Brecon Common Council Minutes, 1835–1847 p. 311. 19 BCC 1, 930/47. 20 BCC 1, 3047/45. 21 BCC 1, 4354/45. 22 Pratt, Rev. Jermyn Record of the College of Christ Church in Brecon, 1846. 23 Lloyd, John Poems. 24 Hall, Sir Benjamin A Letter to the Archbishop of Canterbury etc (1851). 25 Thomas, Hugh Towards a Seventeenth Century History of Brecknock (1967), p. 13. 26 Walker, Margaret The Priory Church of St John the Evangelist, Brecon 1782–1808, Brycheiniog, XXVIII. 27 Andrews, C.B. and Beresford, J. (editors), The Torrington Diaries . . . tours through England and Wales of the Hon. John Byng between the years 1781–1784 (1934–38). 28 Quoted in RCHAM op. cit. p. 20. 29 NLW, St John’s Visitors’ Book (Brecon Parochial Records 185) where there is a copy of Scott’s report. 30 I owe this reference to Ken Jones. 31 BCC 1, 1009 a/47 (2b). 32 Freeman E.A. The Churches of Brecon, Archaeologia Cambrensis (July 1854). 33 As 31 above. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 98

98 Brycheiniog

34 BCC1, 1714/47. 35 As 31 above. 36 Jones I.G. and Williams D. op. cit. 37 Jones I.G. The Religious Condition of Breconshire and Radnorshire as revealed in the Religious Census of 1851 in Links with the Past, Swansea and Brecon Historical Essays edited by Jones and Walker (1974). 38 Lewis G.J. The Geography of Religion in the Middle Borderlands of Wales in 1851, Trans. Hon. Soc. of Cymmrodorion, (1980). 39 Quoted in Thomas, Hugh The Slave Trade (1998) p. 738. 40 NLW, Swansea & Brecon Parochial Records 254, Minute Book of Fundraising Committees for St John’s and St Mary’s. 41 See the painting by Paul Murray Ince, Basketmaker’s Shop, Brecon. 42 NLW, St David’s Llanfaes, Churchwardens’ Accounts 1840–1929 and Vestry Book 1857–1920. 43 Freeman, op. cit. 44 As 40 above. 45 Scott, Report in St John’s Visitors’ Book. 46 As 29 above. 47 Hall, Benjamin op. cit. 48 Jones, William Basil Christ’s College, Brecon, its Past History and Present Capabilities Considered (1853). 49 Freeman, op. cit. 50 Quoted in Haslam, Richard Powys (1979) p. 293. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 99

THE SOLDIERS’ COTTAGE HOMES IN BRECON

Towards the end of 1902, a regimental committee was formed under the chairmanship of Lord Tredegar with Major General George Paton, the Colonel The South Wales Borderers, as vice-chairman. The members of the committee consisted of Lord Llangattock, Miss Williams of Penpont, Mr RD Cleasby, the Reverend Edward Bevan (Chaplain to Brecknock Battalion and the future first Bishop of Swansea and Brecon) and Officers Commanding, 24th Regimental District, the Regular, Militia and Volunteer Battalions. The aim of the committee was to further the idea and to raise the necessary funds to provide rent-free cottages for NCOs and men of the South Wales Borderers, who were incapacitated by military service; Militia and Volunteers being eligible. The idea of the scheme had no doubt gathered pace as a direct result of 3,500 men of the Regiment who saw service during the Anglo-Boer War (1899–1902); many of whom came forward as volunteers for full-time active service in South Africa from the part-time Militia and Volunteer Battalions of the South Wales Borderers. It was only after the Great War that many of the now-familiar ex- service institutions, such as the Royal British Legion, that provide help to ex-servicemen in times of need were established. In fact, the SWB Regimental Association itself was not started until 1909. Sufficient funds to build two cottages were raised. The committee expected that more money could be collected to build more cottages. On 25 March 1903, a plot of land was leased from Lord Tredegar, at a nominal rent, about a quarter of a mile from Brecon Barracks on the Abergavenny Road at a place called Dorlangoch, and two cottages were built. Today, this spot is just after the old turnoff to Dering Lines camp. Each cottage consisted of three bedrooms and bathroom (with hot and cold water – certainly a luxury in 1903!) upstairs, and a parlour, kitchen, scullery, etc., on the ground floor; and each had a good sized garden. The architect was Mr CJE Large of Brecon and the builders, Messrs TE Morgan also of Brecon. The Brecon County Times reported that the cottages were a credit to their good taste, ability and workmanship. The cottages were opened on Friday 12 August 1904. They were dedicated to the memory of officers, NCOs and men of the South Wales Borderers, who lost their lives in South Africa 1899–1902. The cottage on the left was named ‘Chillianwallah’ and the other ‘Rorke’s Drift’. There were simple rules for the conditions of tenancy: 1. The men were to be selected by the Regiment through the Officer Commanding the SWB Depot, and were allowed to occupy their cottage free of all rent, rates and taxes, for as long as they wished, provided their conduct and that of their family remained satisfactory. In the event of the death of the man, his family were required to vacate the cottage within three months. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 100

100 Brycheiniog 2. No alteration or additional building, inside or out, was to be made by the occupants without the consent of the Officer Commanding the SWB Depot, who also paid for any necessary repairs. 3. The cottages were not to be used for shops for the sale of any article, and no lodgers were to be taken in. 4. It was expected that the gardens and the fences were to be neatly kept. The cost of removal of furniture of the selected occupants from their present houses to the cottages in Brecon was also paid by the fund. The first occupants selected were Private Harry Banks (Chillianwallah) and Colour Sergeant Harry Standen (Rorke’s Drift), both married men with families. Each had been severely wounded during the Anglo-Boer War. Harry Banks, from Bradford-on-Avon, enlisted into the 24th in November 1885 and served with the 2nd Battalion in the Burma campaign and during the Anglo-Boer war was attached to 8th Mounted Infantry Battalion. He was severely wounded at Paardeberg on 18 February 1900. Harry Standen had been an instructor with 3rd Battalion (Militia) and 3rd Volunteer Battalion at Pontypool. He served with F Company of the 2nd Battalion in South Africa and was severely wounded at Modderfontein on 2 February 1901. Later, he was awarded the Distinguished Conduct Medal and was Mentioned in Despatches for his services in South Africa. Four decades later, the 24th Regiment Journal reported that the original tenants still occupied the cottages. Regimental records, however, reveal that Colour Sergeant Standen died in July 1943 and, in July 1946, two new tenancy agreements were drawn up in the name of Fred Crocket (Chillianwallah) and Sergeant Frank Wheeler (Rorke’s Drift). Fred Crocket who served throughout the Second World War with the Territorial Army died in February 1987 at which time it is thought that the cottages were sold. Frank Wheeler is still, of course, very much alive, despite being wounded three times during the North West Europe campaign in 1944–45. He now lives in John Street, Brecon and continues to be a very active member of Brecon Branch of the Regimental Association. Over the years some alterations have been made to the cottages. Comparison of photographs of different dates show that sloping roofs had been added to the dormer windows – obviously water seeped in from the flat roofed balconies – and tile cladding added to the upper floor. The original York stone embellishments are no longer visible. In the last two years, the owner of Rorke’s Drift has extended this cottage incorporating the old staircase. Part of the garden of Chillianwallah is currently up for sale as a separate building plot. The present occupants appear very happy with their homes – now 103 years old – which suggests we can only reiterate the County Times’ report referring the enduring good taste and workmanship of the local architect and builders.

MARTIN EVERETT 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 101

Brycheiniog 101

Plate 1 The cottages as built in 1903.

Plate 1 The cottages as they look today. 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 102 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 103

INDEX

A Christian Directorie 36 Beachy Head 63 Dorlangoch 99 A View of some Part . . . 34 Beales, William, & Co 13 Free St. 83 A schedule of places of worship in Bendorf, General Harry 17 George Inn Brecon 90 Bengal 52, 53, 70, 72, 73, 74 Glamorgan St. 83, 96 Abbey Dore 87 Benkulen (Java) 70 Golden Lion Inn 57, 60 Aberanell 68 Bevan, Revd Edward 99 Guildhall 83, 91 Abercamlais 82 Bidgood, Ruth 20 Havard Chapel 57 Abercynrig 5, 45, 46, 61, 68 Bleddyn, William 26 High St. 92 Abergavenny 65, 87, 99 Blue Books 95 John St. 100 Abergwesyn 67 Bohun family 87 Kensington 83 Abergwili 25 Bold, Mrs Hugh 56 Lion Lane (Lion St) 57, Aberystwyth 11, 20 Bombay 70, 72, 94 83, 84 Academi Cymreig 19 Book of Common Prayer 33 Llanfaes 64, 83 Act of Uniformity (1559) 26 Borneo 16 6 Lion St. 60 Adams, Dr. Sam 19, 20 Bradford-on-Avon 100 Lion Yard 83 A Defence of the Government . . . Brampton, Mr 52 Little Free St. 83 35 Brecknock Assoc. for the New Buck 92 Aden 16 Welfare of the Blind 12 Newgate St. 69 Aequity . . . 28, 32, 36, 37 Brecknock Society and North’s Wagon 49, 61 A Glorious Work in the World Museum Friends 7, 19, 20, Plough Chapel 83 20 22, 45 Priory 87 Almanac 11 Brecknockshire 23, 26, 27, 40 Priory Church 57, 93, 94, An Almond for a Parrat 25 Agricultural Society 65 95 Anglo-Welsh Review, The 19 Brecon 10, 16, 17, 18, 19, Priory Hill 83, 96 Anson, admiral George 61 22, 27, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, Prison (Llanfaes) 93 Antel, Fred 18 51, 54, 56, 60, 61, 64, 65, Rock and Castle 64 Armada, The 37 67, 68, 70, 81, 83, 84, 85, Rose & Crown 92 Army Museums Ogilvy Trust 86, 89, 90, 91, 95, 100 Ship St. 47, 64 17 Barracks 99 Shire Hall 93, 94 Arnold, Thomas 95 Bethel Chapel 83 St David’s 53, 84, 85, 92, Boots (Chemist) 96 93, 96 Babington Plot 36 Cae Mawr 93 St John’s 53, 56, 84, 87, Bacon, Olive Louise 7 Camden Rd. 84 91 Bailey, Sir Joseph 13,91 Captain’s Walk 22 St Mary’s 53, 82, 84, 89, 91 Bale, Bishop John 23 Castle Hotel 94 St Mary’s St. 84 Banbury 29 Castle St. 45 Sheep (Ship) St. 70 Bangor 28 Cathedral 7 Struet 64, 83, 96 Banks, Pte. Harry 100 Catholic Church 83, 90, 95 Three Horseshoes 92 Bardsey 21 Christ College 25, 82, 84, Toll house (Llanfaes) 85 Barrie JM 9 85, 87, 88, 90, 91, 92, 94 Walnut Square (Llanfaes) Barrow, Henry 24, 26 Church St. 92 83 Bath 82 Coke Chapel 83, 96 Watergate 83 Battle 53 Congregational College 84 Watton 83 Battle Abbey 87 Co-op 96 Wheat St. 48, 51, 55, 59, Baynham-Jones, Alan 18 Dering Lines 99 70 Baynham, Dorothy 11 Dinas House 45, 56, 70, Brecon-Abergavenny Canal BBC Wales 21 86, 93 65, 67, 68 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 104

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Brecon Access Group 15 Castell Madog 13 Daughters of Charity 7 Brecon Action 17 Cathedine 13 Davies, Grahame 22 Brecon Beacons 95 Cecil, Sir William 27, 28 Davies, Bishop Richard 27 Brecon Boat Company 65 Cefn Brith 25 Davi(e)s, Revd Richard (vicar Brecon Common Council 85, Chab[b]ert, Mrs Elizabeth of Brecon) 82 86 53, 55, 56 Davies, Archdeacon 89, 93 Brecon County Times 99, 100 Chabert, Lt. Col. Peter 53 Davies, Richard 26, 40 Brecon (Old) Bank 70, 74 Chapels: Davies, Sylvia 15 Brecon Benevolent Schools 82 Bethel (Brecon) 83 de Winton, William 91 Brecon Town Improvement Breconshire, photos of 13 Dearnley, Moira 20 Act (1776) 55, 59, 65 St Nicholas Lane 26 Dering Lines 15 Breconshire 9, 12, 45, 52, Chartism 95 Dolycoed 65 56, 60, 61, 68, 84, 95 Chillianwallah 99 Dolygors 66 Breconshire toll allocations 13 Church of England 63 Dorlangoch 5 Brecon Town Council 5 Church Building Act 1818 Duggan, WH 16 Bridges, Dr John 35 84 Dumfries 56 Brycheiniog 45, 75 Church Building Society 93 Dwnn family (Cydweli) 26 Builth Wells 13, 61 Churches: Hundred of 62 Brecon churches – see Easington (Pembrokeshire) 56 Bulcott, Richard 64 under Brecon East India Company 45, 46, Bull, Bishop George 86 Eglwys Oen Duw 12 47, 52, 68, 69, 73, 74 Burage, Champlin 23 Llandefaelog Fach 92 Poplar Fund 71 Burghley, Lord 39 St David’s, Llanwrtyd 12 East India Register 72 Burma 100 St Thomas a Watering 26 Ecclesiastical Commissioners Burnside, Ann 56 St Vincent’s, Pinner 7 84, 85, 86, 90, 96 Burnside, Revd 56 Troedrhiwdalar 40 ‘Ecclesiasticus’ 85 Byng, The Hon. John 59, 87 Clayton, John (architect) 93 Edgar, Hugh 10 Cleasby, RD 99 Edinburgh 26 Caernarfon 18 Clungurnant 61, 62, 63, 64 Edwards, Jane 56 Caerphilly 11 Cobb, JR 91 Edwards, Sir Owen 23 Cainan, Bill 15 Colleges: Elizabeth I 31, 32, 34, 36, 37 Calcutta 51, 53, 54, 72, 73 Brecon Congregational 84 English Channel 72 Callaghan, Yvonne 18 Peterhouse 23, 25, 32, 34 Enlli 21 Calvinism 25 St Alban Hall, Oxford 26 Epynt 25, 68 Cambridge 33 St David’s, Lampeter 85 Eritrea 16 Campbell, Sir Archibald Collinson, Patrick 23 Evans, Christine 21 Camden, Marquess of 53, Conan Doyle, Sir Arthur 9 Evans, david 60 85, 86, 94, 96 Convocation 35, 36 Evans, Evan (blacksmith) 64 Canals 13 Cope, Sir Anthony 29, 37 Evans, John 92 Canterbury 37, 82 Council of British Archaeo- Everett, Martin 5, 15, 16, 17 Archbishop of 87 logy 5 Exeter 11 Canton 70 Court of High Commission 26 Exhortation unto the Gover- Carcanet (publisher) 20 Crickhowell 12 nours of Wales 32, 34 Cardiff 17, 18, 19, 20, 94 Crocket, Fred 100 Fanog 60 Careers Wales 11 Crug, The 68 Farms: Carmarthen 26, 62 Cruggin (Epynt) 68 Cefn Troescoed 13 Carnhuanawc 82 Cwmwysg (Trecastle) 12 Clynmercher Isaf 13 Cartwright, Dr Thomas 23, CyMAL 9, 16 Ffynnon Fawr 19 33 Daniel, Tom 60, 61, 62, 63, 64 Yscir Fechan 53 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 105

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Fawsley 26 Harris, Robert and George Jones (Dan-y-Crug) 60 Felinfach 52 (tobacconist) 72 Jones and Davies (Presteigne) Fennifach 64 Haseley 26 70 Ffrwdgrech 93, 94 Hatton, Charles 56 Jones, Angela 11 Field, John 33, 37, 38 Hay, Charles 55, 57 Jones, Basil 95 Figg, Col. Tony 17 Hay, Mrs Mary 47, 55, 56 Jones, ‘Uncle David’ 52, 64 First Booke of Christian Exercise Hay-on-Wye 13 Jones, David (Fanog) 60 ... 36 Hembrow, Alison 17 Jones, David Ceri 20 Forest Crychan 12 Herbert, Henry 32 Jones, Edward 54, 55 Forest Tywi 12 Hereford 11 Jones, Captain Frederick 82 Fort St George (Madras) 73 Cathedral 93 Jones, Prof. Gwynfor 5 Forty-two articles of Religion Hereford Journal 65 Jones, CSgt John Lewis 16 25 Herefordshire 87 Jones, Ken 5 France 37, 73, 75 Historical Memoranda of Brecon- Jones, Mary Ann 51 Freeman, Edward Augustus shire 55 Jones, T Harri 9 89, 92, 95 History of Architecture 95 Jones, Theophilus 45, 53, 57 French Revolution 81 History of Breconshire 45, 57 Joseph, Tom 62, 63 Fugitive’s Drift 16 History of Protestant Nonconformity in Wales 23 Kingswood 82 Gallipoli 16 Hong Kong 69 Kington 26 Garth 63 Hooker, Jeremy 22 Knight, Pte. David Thomas Garthbrengy 13 House of Commons 29, 85 16 General Bank of India 74 House of Lords 85 Knightley, Sir Richard 26 Geneva 33 Huet, Thomas 27 Gichard, Helen 20 Hughes family (Tregunter) Lampeter 85 Gilbert, William 83, 96 56 Lamport Hall (Northants) 94 Glanusk, Lord 13 Hughes (watchmaker) 72 Land Army 13 Goldrydd, Elystan 25 Hughes, Anna Marie 56 Large, CJE (architect) 99 Glyn Collwn 19 Hughes, Bishop William 27, Lawrence, Revd (Brecon) 56 Godley, Helen 26 33 Lawrence, Thomas 56 Gravesend 68 Huntingdon, Lady 83, 96 Lead mines (Dinas, Llanwrtyd) Great Exhibition 1851 81 65, 66 Great Sessions of Wales 11 Incorporated Church Building Lee, Edward Dunn 26, 29 Green, Celia 15, 16 Society 84 Leicester, Earl of 29 Greenwood, John 24, 26 India 16, 46, 52, 54, 60, 68, Leith 56 Gregorie (Captain, Manship) 69, 71, 73 Lewis family 9 69, 71 Isandhlwana 17 Lewis, G. 69 Griffith, David 85 Isham, Sir Charles and Lady Lewis, Robert 56 Griffiths, Revd Charles 92 94 Lewys, Huw 28 Guernsey 11 Libraries: Guise faction 36 Jackson, Jeffrey 69 Brecon 15 Gunpowder Plot, The 5 James & Price (Cardiff) 94 Museum 7 Gwyn, Revd Robert 36 James, Daniel 66 National of Wales 15, 74 Gwynne family (Garth) 63 James, Thomas 83 Lincoln’s Inn 85 Java 70 Little Orme 36 Habershon & Co. (architects) Jeffreys & Powell 45 Llanafan 9 92 Johnson, Francis 26 Llanafanfawr 40 Hall, Sir Benjamin 87, 88 Jones family (Abercamlais) 26 Llanbister Canal 11 Harris, Howel 20 Jones family (Dorallt) 12 Llandaff 27, 95 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 106

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Llanddeti 13 Old Kent Road 26 Mid-Wales 6, 20 Llandeiniolen 28 Temple Bar 51 Milford Hall 9 Llandrindod Wells 10, 82 Vauxhall Pleasure Gardens Milford, Ian 10 Llandudno 36 51 Minden 53 Llandyfalle 12, 13 Longfellow (Brecon Golden Ministry of Defence 17 Llanfihangel Abergwesyn 12 Lion) 57, 59 Modderfontein (RSA) 100 Llanfihangel Bryn Pabuan 12 Longman & Broderip (pianos) Mondrainville 17 Llanfihangel Cwm-du 82 50 Montford & Co. (toy makers) Llangammarch Wells 13, 25 Lordships: 72 Llangattock, Lord 99 Builth 13 Montgomeryshire 9, 11, 12 Llangynidr 13 Elvel 13 Morgan, David 20 Llanrhaeadr-ym-Mochnant 32 Hay 13 Morgan, John 64 Llanwrthwl 12 Lowe, James 65, 66 Morgan, TE (builder) 99 Llanwrtyd Wells 12, 13, 45, Lowe, John 65, 67 Morgan, William 32, 38, 40 48, 49, 61, 65, 68 Lower Chapel 13 Murray, CK 90 Cwmbach 60 Lucas, Dr. 91 Museums: Cwmirfon 60 Lucy, Bishop 86 Abergavenny 15 Dinas 60, 61, 65 Lugwardine 96 Brecon/Brecknock 22, 45 Dinas Mill cottages 63 Lutheranism 25 Imperial War 15 Maesgwilod mill 60 Lycée Français 7 National Army 17 Llewellin, William 87 Victoria & Albert 11 Lloyd, David 51, 60 Madras 53, 55, 70, 72, 74 Nantmel 27, 82 Lloyd, Elizabeth 46, 47, 51, Maesllwch (Maeslough, National Archives 11 52, 53, 55, 56, 70 Glasbury 56, 70 National Census 1851 90 Lloyd, Capt. John 45ff, 86, 93 Malaya 16 National Curriculum 15 Lloyd, John ‘the Radical’ 45 Mansell, Lord (Margam) 61 Neild, James (jeweller) 72 Lloyd, John (Aberanell) 65 Marches 32 Nelson, Admiral Horatio 61, Lloyd, John Bullock 61 Margam 61 81 Lloyd, John junior 67 Marprelate, Martin 38 Nelson, Revd William 82 Lloyd, Sir John 5, 45 Marprelate Tracts 33 New and Selected Poems 20 Lloyd, Margaret 69 Mary, Queen of Scots 36 New Testament 33 Lloyd, Rees 49 Matthias, Glyn 5 New York 94 Lloyd, Rees (b.1756) 72 Matthias, Rowland 5 Newchurch 11 Lloyd, Richard 46 Collected Poems 19 Newport 52, 64, 95 Lloyd, Tom 51, 52 Maurice, Thomas 94 Newtown 9, 10 Lloyd, Lt WW 16 Maybery, Walter 91 Nigeria 16 Llyn Peninsula 20, 21, 36 McDonald, Duncan 15 Normandy 17 Llyswen 12 McGinn, Donald 23 North, Revd William 84 London 7, 11, 39, 46, 48, 53, McGuiness, Patrick 20 Northampton 26, 94 54, 55, 57, 65, 70, 73, 74, McIntosh, Alex (saddler) 72 85, 95 Mears, John 56 Old Testament 31, 32 Bernars St. 46 Medal Office 16 Ostend 52 Bulkley’s 50 Meredith, Christopher 20, 22 Owen, GeorGge 24 Cheapside 50 Merthyr Cynog 53, 56 Owen, Jamie 17 Crown and Anchor 51 Merthyr Tydfil 15, 95 Guildhall 11 Mhow 16 Paardeberg (RSA) 100 Jerusalem Coffee House Middleditch & Co. (grocer) 72 Page, Anna 9, 11 48 Middleton, Marmaduke 26, Palestine 16 Lombard St. 48 33 Papacy, The 36 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 107

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Parker & Son (glass maker) Price, David 60, 61, 70 Russell, Lord John 91 72 Price, Sir John 27, 28, 29, 40 St Asaph 27, 32, 33 Parker, John 89 Price, Morris (Nantmel) 27 St David’s 27, 33, 82, 85, 86, Parliament 29, 30, 36, 37 Price, Rees 92 95 Parri, Brynach 20 Price, Richard 27, 29 Salesbury, William 33, 40 Parry, Edward 20 Price, Thomas 82, 83 Salisbury 35 Parry, Margaret 56 Prichard & Seddon 95, 96 Saunders, Erasmus 81 Parsons, Henry (haberdasher, Privy Council 27 School École Edwards- Brecon) 69 Pugh, Sheenagh 22 Griffiths 17 Parsons, Robert 36 School St Joseph’s Brecon 15 Pater Noster Square Radio Maldwyn 9 Scotland 23, 38 Paton, Major General George Radnorshire 9, 12, 13, 27, Scott (surgeon, Manship) 31 99 56 Scott, George Gilbert 89, 93, Pearce, Col and Mrs 91, 93, Rattray, David 16 94 94, 96 ‘Rebecca’ riots 84, 86, 95 Selected Poems 21 Peel, Albert 23 Rees, David 64 Sennybridge 12, 13 Pembroke, Earl of 32 Rees, Dr David Thomas 23, Separatists 23, 26, 40 Pembrokeshire 24, 56 40 Seren (publisher) 20, 21 Penisharan (Felinfach) 52 Regiments: Shell, Lynda 15 Penpont 61, 82, 94 Madras Infantry (108th of Ships: Penry, John 5, 23ff Foot) 53 Abergavenny 71 Penry, Meredith 25 Monmouthshire 17 Kingdom 67 Penyberth 3 Royal of Wales 15ff Manship 46, 47, 48, 49, Perl mewn adfyd 28 South Wales Borderers 51, 53, 54, 63, 65, 66, 68, Peterborough 94 15ff, 99 70, 71, 72, 73, 74 Petrie, Mr 74 Regimental Association 100 Morse 69 Philip II of Spain 36 24th Regiment Journal Speke 69 Phillips, Sir Thomas 94 100 Siddons, Sarah 51 Phillips, Tom 18 The Royal Welch Fusiliers Simpkin and Marshal 7 Pierce, John 68 (23rd of Foot) 18, 53 Singapore 16 Pierce, William 2 The Royal Welsh 18 Smith, Lindsay 10 Pole, Len 16 12th of Foot 53 Smurthwaite, Leslie 17 Pontypool 100 37th of Foot 53 Society for the Promoting . . . Portsmouth 67, 68 Rhiwledyn 36 of Churches 91 Powell, Charles 64 Richards, Catherine 11 Somerset, Revd Lord Powell, Jeremiah (Currier, Rivers: William 82 Brecon) 64 Honddu (Brecon) 64 South Africa 16, 99 Powell, John 45, 68, 91 Hughli 73 South America 50 Powell, Peter 20 Irfon 65 Spain 37 Powell, Vavasor 24 Nant Gyrnant 65 Stafford family 87 Powell, Walter 45, 46, 47, Nant Lledgwial 65 Standen, CSgt Harry 100 49, 52, 54, 55, 56, 57, 59, Usk 12, 90, 95 State and Conditions of the 60, 61, 62, 64, 65, 68, 69, Thames 47, 68, 73 Collegiate Churwch . . . 87 70, 71, 73, 74 Robinson, Bishop Nicholas Stockwell 48, 51 Powys 20 28 Sudan 16 Archives, Friends of 11 Rorke's Drift 15, 17, 99 Swansea 22 County Council 5, 10, 12 Rothschild Bank 11 Swansea and Brecon, Bishop Pratt, Revd Jermyn 86 Royal British Legion 99 of 99 Presteigne 70 Rugby School 95 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 108

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Talachddu 12 Waddington, John 23 Williams, Howell 52, 53, 54, Talybont-on-Usk 19 Waldegrave, Robert 26 55 Territorial army 100 Waldegrove, Brigadier 53 Williams, Revd JD 95 Theatr Brycheiniog 15 Wales Millennium Centre 17 Williams, Joanna (Tredustan) The Aequity of an Humble Wales, Prince of 16 56 Supplication 26, 28, 32, 36, Walker, Margaret 87 Williams, Mrs Margaret 52, 37 Warne, Peter (shoemaker) 72 55 The Canals of Mars 20 Wars: Williams, Mary Ann 56 The Flooded Valley 19 Boer 16, 99, 100 Williams, Penry 94 The Historie of Corah, Dathan English Civil 81 Williams, Robert 56 and Abiram 40 Peninsular 7 Williams, Roger 46 Thirlwall, Bishop Connop Seven Years 53 Williams, Roswell C 94 94 World I 16, 99 Williams, Revd Thomas 84, Thirty-nine Articles 24 World II 11, 15, 100 89 Thomas, Dylan 9 Zulu 15, 16, 17 Williams, Thomas 90 Thomas, Hugh 87 Warwickshire 26, 37, 95 Williams, William 56, 70 Thomas, Prof. Wynn 22 Waters, William 60, 70 Wood, Col. Thomas, MP 86 Thomson (linen weaver, Watkins, David 60 Wood, General 94 Brecon) 64 Watkins, Col. Lloyd Vaughan Woodhouse (director EIC) Throckmorton, Job 26, 29, 91 70 33, 37 Watters, Mrs Mary 13 Wooding, DL 52, 63 Travers, Walter 33 Watton, William (currier) 64 Wordsworth, John (Captain, Trecastle 12 Welsh arts Council 19 Abergavenny) 71, 72 Tredegar, Lord 99 Welsh Assembly Govern- Wordsworth, William 71 Tredustan 56 ment 16 Wyatt, Thomas Henry 89, Tregaron 82 Welsh County Archivists 11 91 Tregunter 56 Welsh Methodists 20 Wesley 82 Yny Llyfr Hwn 36 Udall, John 26, 33, 38 Wesley, John 83 Ystrad Meurig 82 Universities: 30 Wheeler, Sgt. Frank 100 Ystradgynlais 12 Cambridge 23, 24, 25 White, John Meadows 85, Ystradfellte 13 Leicester 17 86, 90 Oxford 26 White, Mary 56 Zion 36 Wales 11, 20, 22 Whitgift, Archbishop John University of Wales Press 19, 26, 37 20 Whittaker, Carol 17 Upper Chapel 13, 68 Wieczorek, Natalia 17 Valleys: Wilkins, Augusta 56 Bran 12 Wilkins, Jeffrgey 68, 69 Cilieni 12 Wilkins, Walter 69, 70 Cynrig 12 William, Edward & Co. 65 Elan 13 Williams (Penpont and Senni 12 Abercamlais) 82 Usk 12 Williams, Miss (Penpont) 99 Yscir 12 Williams (Ystrad Meurig) 82 Vaughan family (Yscir Fechan) Williams, Arfon 18 53 Williams, Elizabeth 53 Victoria Cross 15, 16 Williams, Sir Glanmor 23, 24, 37 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 109 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 110 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 111 44036_Brycheiniog_2005:44036_Brycheiniog_2005 27/4/16 15:44 Page 112